ewpratten.com/content/blog/2022-03-15-Java-cheatsheet.md

layout	title	description	date	tags	draft	extra
page	A Java development cheatsheet for my classmates	PROG10082: Reference Material	2022-03-15	reference	true	excerpt hidden auto_center_images This document is written for my PROG10082 classmates as a quick reference for some Java concepts that were skipped over in the course. true true

This document is written for my PROG10082 classmates as a quick reference for some Java concepts that were skipped over in the course. This document may be updated as needed.

VSCode Tips

Remember, you can open intelisense by pressing Ctrl + Space. This is a super handy tool for auto-complete in your code no matter the language you are working in.

Typing the following then opening intelisense will give you some shorthand options for quickly typing common code. Just select the option you want with arrow keys, and press Enter to apply it.

Shortcut	Description
syso	Automatically print System.out.println();
syserr	Automatically print System.err.println();

Upper and lowercase types

Many types you encounter in Java have an uppercase and lowercase variant, for example int and Integer. The difference is important. Here are the avalible uppercase variants of common types:

Standard type	Uppercase type
short	Short
char	Character
byte	Byte
int	Integer
double	Double
float	Float
long	Long

Null and optional values

One uses of the uppercase variant of a type is to allow null values. In most languages, null means "Nothing". In Java, you can use null to indicate that a variable is not yet assigned a value. This can be checked with the == operator.

An example usage of this could be the following:

// We want to ask for a number of records to read
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
int recordCount = input.nextInt();

// Create a value to store the highest record in
// I have made this `null` so we can know if we didnt get a value
Integer highestRecord = null;

// Read the records
for (int i = 0; i < recordCount; i++) {
    // Read a value
    int record = input.nextInt();

    // If the value is higher than the current highest record
    // or the highest record is `null`, update the highest record
    if (highestRecord == null || record > highestRecord) {
        highestRecord = record;
    }
}

// We now have the highest record
if (highestRecord != null) {
    System.out.println("The highest record is " + highestRecord);
} else {
    System.out.println("No records were entered");
}

Pass-by-reference

Another use of uppercase types is pass-by-reference.

// This is a function that will try to add `1` to a value
void addOne(int value) {
    value = value + 1;
}

void main(String ...args) {
    // We can make a value
    int myNumber = 1;

    // And pass it to a function. You would expect this to work
    addOne(myNumber);

    // But at this point, `myNumber` is still `1`
}

Now, we can switch to using uppercase types to make the function edit the value.

// This is a function that will try to add `1` to a value
void addOne(Integer value) {
    value = value + 1;
}

void main(String ...args) {
    // We can make a value
    Integer myNumber = 1;

    // And pass it to a function. This will work, since we have an upprcase type
    addOne(myNumber);

    // At this point, `myNumber` is now `2`
}