Java Glossary : new

Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy Green ©1996-2004 Canadian Mind Products

Java definitions: 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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new

the keyword in Java that allocates new objects and initialises them. This is roughly the equivalent of C++'s new, C's malloc or object Pascal's create. There is no corresponding free. However, you can speed the garbage collector along by setting references to objects no longer needed to null. Let us say you created a Dalmatian object a subclass of Dog with new Dalmatian(). Here is the order of events:

1. Allocate space for all the fields of both Dog and Dalmatian.
2. Bulk zero all the space which effectively null/zeroes each Dog and Dalmatian field as appropriate.
3. Do the member declaration initialisations of the Dog class to initialise the Dog fields.
4. Do the constructor initialisations of the Dog class. Watch out! The constructor may use overridden methods that reference uninitialised Dalmatian fields.
5. Do the member declaration initialisations of the Dalmatian subclass to initialise the Dalmatian fields.
6. Do the constructor initialisations of the Dalmatian subclass.

constructor

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