Java Reference
In-Depth Information
42
Figure 8
Calling the
replace
Method
When a method is defined in a class, the definition specifies the types of the explicit
parameters and the return value. For example, the
String
class defines the
length
method as
public int length()
That is, there are no explicit parameters, and the return value has the type
int
. (For
now, all the methods that we consider will be Ȓpublicȓ methodsȌsee
Chapter 10
for
more restricted methods.)
The type of the implicit parameter is the class that defines the methodȌ
String
in
our case. It is not mentioned in the method definitionȌhence the term Ȓimplicitȓ.
The
replace
method is defined as
public String replace(String target, String
replacement)
To call the
replace
method, you supply two explicit parameters,
target
and
replacement
, which both have type
String
. The returned value is another string.
When a method returns no value, the return type is declared with the reserved word
void
. For example, the
PrintStream
class defines the
println
method as
public void println(String output)
