Java Programming

7 Classes and Objects

7.1 INTRODUCTION

A class is a basic unit of encapsulation and abstraction. It binds together data and methods that work on data. The class is an abstract data type (ADT) so the creation of a class simply creates a template. As discussed in the beginning of the Chapter 1, each and everything has to be defined within the class. The data members of the class are called field and the member functions are known as methods. The general syntax of creating a class in Java is shown as below.

 class Class_name { type member_variable1; type member_variable2; //.................. type member_variable3; type methodname1(parameter-list) { //body of method } type methodname2(parameter-list) { //body of method } type methodnameN(parameter-list) ...