Glossary - Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design - page 644

bug— A slang term for a defect or error in a
computer program.
build-and-fix approach— An approach to soft-
ware development in which a program is
created without any significant planning or
design, then modified until it reaches some level
of acceptance. It is a prevalent, but unwise,
approach.
bus— A group of wires in the computer that
carry data between components such as the
CPU and main memory.
button— A graphical user interface component
that allows the user to initiate an action, set a
condition, or choose an option with a mouse
click. There are several kinds of GUI buttons.
See also check box, push button, radio button.
byte— (1) A unit of binary storage equal to
eight bits. (2) A Java reserved word that repre-
sents a primitive integer type, stored using eight
bits in two's complement format.
byte stream— An I/O stream that manages 8-bit
bytes of raw binary data. See also character
stream.
bytecode— The low-level format into which the
Java compiler translates Java source code. The
bytecodes are interpreted and executed by the
Java interpreter, perhaps after transportation
over the Internet.
capacity— See storage capacity.
case— (1) A Java reserved word that is used
to identify each unique option in a switch
statement. (2) The orientation of an alphabetic
character (uppercase or lowercase).
case sensitive— Differentiating between the
uppercase and lowercase versions of an alpha-
betic letter. Java is case sensitive; therefore the
identifier total and the identifier Total are con-
sidered to be different identifiers.
cast— A Java operation expressed using a type
or class name in parentheses to explicitly

convert and return a value of one data type into
another.
catch— A Java reserved word that is used to
specify an exception handler, defined after a
try block.
CD-Recordable (CD-R)— A compact disc on
which information can be stored once using a
home computer with an appropriate drive. See
also CD-Rewritable, CD-ROM.
CD-Rewritable (CD-RW)— A compact disc on
which information can be stored and rewritten
multiple times using a home computer with
an appropriate drive. See also CD-Recordable,
CD-ROM.
CD-ROM— An optical secondary memory
medium that stores binary information in a
manner similar to a musical compact disc.
central processing unit (CPU)— The hardware
component that controls the main activity of
a computer, including the flow of information
and the execution of commands.
char— A Java reserved word that represents the
primitive character type. All Java characters are
members of the Unicode character set and are
stored using 16 bits.
character font— A specification that defines the
distinct look of a character when it is printed
or drawn.
character set— An ordered list of characters,
such as the ASCII or Unicode character sets.
Each character corresponds to a specific, unique
numeric value within a given character set.
A programming language adopts a particular
character set to use for character representation
and management.
character stream— An I/O stream that manages
16-bit Unicode characters. See also byte stream.
character string— A series of ordered charac-
ters. Represented in Java using the String class
and string literals such as "hello" .