17. What are the potential trips/traps in SCJP exam?
Answer: Provided by Ajith Kallambella (From Java Ranch: http://www.javaranch.com)
- Two public classes in the same file.
- Main method calling a non-static method.
- Methods with the same name as the constructor(s).
- Thread initiation with classes that dont have a run() method.
- Local inner classes trying to access non-final vars.
- Case statements with values out of permissible range.
- Math class being an option for immutable classes !!
- instanceOf is not same as instanceof
- Private constructors
- An assignment statement which looks like a comparison if ( a=true)...
- System.exit() in try-catch-finally blocks.
- Uninitialized variable references with no path of proper initialization.
- Order of try-catch-finally blocks matters.
- main() can be declared final.
- -0.0 == 0.0 is true.
- A class without abstract methods can still be declared abstract.
- RandomAccessFile descends from Object and implements DataInput and DataOutput.
- Map doesnot implement Collection.
- Dictionary is a class, not an interface.
- Collection is an Interface where as Collections is a helper class.
- Class declarations can come in any order ( derived first, base next etc. ).
- Forward references to variables gives compiler error.
- Multi dimensional arrays can be sparce ie., if you imagine the array as a matrix, every row need not have the same number of columns.
- Arrays, whether local or class-level, are always initialized,
- Strings are initialized to null, not empty string.
- An empty string is NOT the same as a null string.
- A declaration cannot be labelled.
- continue must be in a loop( for, do , while ). It cannot appear in case constructs.
- Primitive array types can never be assigned to each other, eventhough the primitives themselves can be assigned. ie., ArrayofLongPrimitives = ArrayofIntegerPrimitives gives compiler error eventhough longvar = intvar is perfectly valid.
- A constructor can throw any exception.
- Initilializer blocks are executed in the order of declaration.
- Instance initializer(s) gets executed ONLY IF the objects are constructed.
- All comparisons involving NaN and a non-Nan would always result false.
- Default type of a numeric literal with a decimal point is double.
- integer (and long ) operations / and % can throw ArithmeticException while float / and % will never, even in case of division by zero.
- == gives compiler error if the operands are cast-incompatible.
- You can never cast objects of sibling classes( sharing the same parent ), even with an explicit cast.
- equals returns false if the object types are different.It does not raise a compiler error.
- No inner class can have a static member.
- File class has NO methods to deal with the contents of the file.
- InputStream and OutputStream are abstract classes, while DataInput and DataOutput are interfaces.
