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Java

Posted by chrisfinelli
chrisfinelli
1,161 Points

Slight constructor confusion... In the Hangman's Game.java file

Hello. I have slight constructor confusion... In the Hangman's Game.java file, there is a Game constructor used but the following statements don't use the the "new" java operator to create an object. Also, I'm not sure where it was stated in the series that the use of double quotes "" is an accepted shortcut for declaration, instantiation, or initialization. Please see below & thanks in advance

class Game {
  public static final int MAX_MISSES =7;
  private String answer;
  private String hits;
  private String misses;

  public Game(String answer) {
    this.answer = answer;
    hits = "";
    misses = "";
  }

2 Answers

Steve Hunter
Steve Hunter
57,712 Points

Hi Chris,

The double-double quotes is used to create an empty string. You can add characters within them to assign a string value to the variable.

Here, you've declared the string variable hits in the class with:

private String hits;

In the constructor you assign a value to it. With some datatypes, you can assign literals to them rather than going the long-hand way of creating objects. Items such as char, String, int etc. can be assigned literals to short-cut the object creation:

String name = new String("Steve");
// or
String name = "Steve";

With your Game constructor, this gets called when you create a new Game with:

Game game = new Game("treehouse");

So, game will then hold treehouse within its answer member variable and have two initialized string variables holding blank strings.

I hope that helps - ask about anything I have missed.

Steve.

chrisfinelli
chrisfinelli
1,161 Points
chrisfinelli
chrisfinelli
1,161 Points

Thanks for breaking it down for me, Steve! Great explanation :)