Head First Java Book question

[silverglade]

Hi, yep it's me again. I have another "Head First Java Book" question if anyone has that book that would be great. The page is page 207. It is an example of making classes more generic so that they can be used by more objects. (I think objects). It's like you make MyAnimalList, instead of ListADog, and ListaCat classes. Generic is better.

My question is. They create a new instance of Cat() and Dog() but have no class declaration on the page, in the code, of those. So I have no idea how the whole complete code would look. I think it is only part done on the page. Any help Greatly appreciated. thank you. Derek

Here is the code.

public class MyAnimalList {
              private Animal[] animals = new Animal[5];
              private int nextIndex = 0;

              public void add(Animal a)  {
                  if(nextIndex < animals.length)  {
                  animals[nextIndex] = a;
                  System.out.println("Animal added at " + nextIndex);

                   }
               }
             }
________________________________________________________________

         public class AnimalTestDrive {
             public static void main (String[] args)  {
                 MyAnimalList list = new MyAnimalList();
                 [B][COLOR="Green"]Dog a = new Dog();//THIS IS NOT DECLARED ANYWHERE!
                 Cat c = new Cat();[/COLOR][/B]//EITHER IS THIS
                 list.add(a);
                 list.add(c);

                 }
           }

[FlipPoker@gmail.com]

Here's an example:

//in Cat.java
public class Cat extends Animal {
   //some code here
}

//in Dog.java
public class Dog extends Animal {
    //some code here
}

//in Animal.java
public class Animal {
    //base definition of Animal
}

You can assume that Cat and Dog are declared somewhere. The declaration isn't that important for your example. The point is that you can treat Cat and Dog objects like Animal objects if they inherit (extend) Animal.

[silverglade]

Wow thank you. I had to go over it again even after your explanation. LOL. But after some breadcrumb trail analysis, I understand it. I happened to come across another part of the book I don't understand, a snippet of code. It is on page 213 of "Head First Java". It explains that there is no "bark()" method in the class "Object". But there is an "al.get(index)" and I don't know if al is some kind of keyword or if it is just a sample name they gave to their arrayList in this example. any more help greatly appreciated. thanks for helping. Here is the code.

Object o = [B][COLOR="Green"]al[/COLOR][/B].get(index);
          int i = o.hashCode();
          o.bark();// illegal, there is no Object method of "bark".

[sunde887]

In this code al is an array list, you extracted the item from the array list at index. Then you store it as an Object.

[silverglade]

Ok thank you both for helping. sunde887 I guess I thought al was some kind of Java class or something. I don't know . LOL. I still have to evolve my brain yet to finish this book. Then i will be superhuman! hehe. thanks. derek