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Java

Posted by Allen C
Allen C
1,448 Points

Why doesn't a constructor method have "void"?

Why doesn't a constructor for a class need to have "void", even though it's not returning anything?

public class Forum {
  private String mTopic;

  public Forum(String topic) {
    mTopic = topic;
  }

how come it isn't 

public class Forum {
  private String mTopic;

  public void Forum(String topic) {
    mTopic = topic;
  }

Thanks in advance!

2 Answers

Blake Larson
Blake Larson
13,014 Points

This is an explanation I found:

So the reason the constructor doesn't return a value is because it's not called directly by your code, it's called by the memory allocation and object initialization code in the runtime. Its return value (if it actually has one when compiled down to machine code) is opaque to the user - therefore, you can't specify it

Allen C
Allen C
1,448 Points

Phew, that's quite confusing! So in the end, it still returns something? Just something that we can't specify nor see?

Blake Larson
Blake Larson
13,014 Points
Blake Larson
Blake Larson
13,014 Points

Yeah, so the constructor is code block that is called to initialize a new instance of a class. I have read that it's the "new" operator that calls the constructor that returns the reference of the new object.