Javadoc Documentation Generator - Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design - page 697

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Javadoc
Documentation
Generator

Javadoc is a tool for creating documentation in HTML format from Java source
code. The utility examines the source code, extracts specially marked information
in the documentation, and then produces Web pages that summarize the software.
Documentation comments, also referred to as doc comments, specify the for-
mat for comments to be processed by the javadoc tool. Special labels called tags
are also parsed by javadoc. Together, doc comments and tags can be used to
construct a complete Java application programming interface (API) specification.
A Java API is a specification of how to work with a class.
Javadoc can be run on packages or individual files (or both). It produces a
well-structured, single document each time. However, javadoc does not support
incremental additions.
Javadoc comes as a standard part of the Java Software Development Kit (SDK).
The tool executable, javadoc.exe, resides in the bin folder of the installation direc-
tory along with the javac compiler and java execution tool. Therefore, if you are
able to compile and execute your code using the command line, javadoc should
also work.
Using javadoc is simple in its plain form; it is very much like compiling a java
source file. For example:

javadoc myfile.java

The javadoc command may also specify options and package names. The
source file name must contain the .java extension (similar to the javac compiler
command).

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