Glossary of Terms
This glossary lists the important terms that appear in this course, along with their definitions.
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abstraction—A process that focuses on what a class or method should do instead of how it will accomplish it.
access modifier—A Java reserved word—public, private, or protected—included in the header of a class or method or in the declaration of a variable that indicates the availability of the class, method, or variable. Omitting an access modifier specifies package access.
accessor method—A method that returns the value of an object’s data field, or instance variable. Also known as a get method or getter.
address—A fixed numeric name associated with each byte of memory.
algorithm—A sequence of steps that solve a problem in a finite amount of time.
alias—A variable that contains the same reference to an object as another variable
analysis of algorithms—The process of measuring the complexity of algorithms.
API—See Java Application Programming Interface.
append—(1) To add characters or a string to the end of a string. (2) To augment a file by adding data to its end.
application—Another term for application program.
application program—A program that enables a user to accomplish a particular task. For example, a word processor is an application program.
application programming interface (API)—See Java Application Programming Interface.
argument—A quantity ...