This is the general form of a method:
type name(parameter-list) {
// body of method
}
Here, type specifies the type of data returned by the method. This can be any valid type,
including class types that you create. If the method does not return a value, its return type
must be void. The name of the method is specified by name. This can be any legal identifier
other than those already used by other items within the current scope. The parameter-list is a
sequence of type and identifier pairs separated by commas. Parameters are essentially variables
that receive the value of the arguments passed to the method when it is called. If the method
has no parameters, then the parameter list will be empty.
Methods that have a return type other than void return a value to the calling routine using
the following form of the return statement:
return value;
Here, value is the value returned.
In the next few sections, you will see how to create various types of methods, including
those that take parameters and those that return values.
Adding a Method to the Box Class
Although it is perfectly fine to create a class that contains only data, it rarely happens. Most
of the time, you will use methods to access the instance variables defined by the class. In fact,
methods define the interface to most classes. This allows the class implementor to hide the
specific layout of internal data structures behind cleaner method abstractions. In addition
to defining methods that provide access to data, you can also define methods that are used
internally by the class itself.
Let's begin by adding a method to the Box class. It may have occurred to you while looking
at the preceding programs that the computation of a box's volume was something that was
best handled by the Box class rather than the BoxDemo class. After all, since the volume of
a box is dependent upon the size of the box, it makes sense to have the Box class compute it.
To do this, you must add a method to Box, as shown here:
// This program includes a method inside the box class.
class Box {
double width;
double height;
double depth;
// display volume of a box
void volume() {
System.out.print("Volume is ");
System.out.println(width * height * depth);
}
}
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