Java Reference
In-Depth Information
16.11. Packages
If you invoke the
getPackage
method on a
Class
object, you get a
Package
object that describes the package in which the class lives (the
Package
class is defined in
java.lang
). You can also get a
Package
object by invok-
ing the static method
getPackage
with the name of the package, or you
can use the static
getPackages
method which returns an array of all known
packages in the system. The
getName
method returns the full name of the
package.
Package objects are used differently than the other reflective typesyou
can't create or manipulate packages at run time. You use
Package
objects
to obtain information about a package, such as its purpose, who created
it, what version it is, and so on. We defer a discussion on this until we
look at packages in detail in
Chapter 18
.
