What is a protected method?

A protected method is a method that can be accessed by any method in its package and inherited by any subclass of its class.

What are the high-level thread states?

The high-level thread states are ready, running, waiting, and dead.

What is the difference between a static and a non-static inner class?

A non-static inner class may have object instances that are associated with instances of the class's outer class. A static inner class does not have any object instances.

What is an object's lock and which object's have locks?

An object's lock is a mechanism that is used by multiple threads to obtain synchronized access to the object. A thread may execute a synchronized method of an object only after it has acquired the object's lock. All objects and classes have locks. A class's lock is acquired on the class's Class object.

When can an object reference be cast to an interface reference?

An object reference be cast to an interface reference when the object implements the referenced interface.

What is the difference between a Window and a Frame?

The Frame class extends Window to define a main application window that can have a menu bar.

What do heavy weight components mean?

Heavy weight components like Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), depend on the local windowing toolkit. For example, java.awt.Button is a heavy weight component, when it is running on the Java platform for Unix platform, it maps to a real Motif button. In this relationship, the Motif button is called the peer to the java.awt.Button. If you create two Buttons, two peers and hence two Motif Buttons are also created. The Java platform communicates with the Motif Buttons using the Java Native Interface. For each and every component added to the application, there is an additional overhead tied to the local windowing system, which is why these components are called heavy weight.

Which package has light weight components?

javax.Swing package. All components in Swing, except JApplet, JDialog, JFrame and JWindow are lightweight components.

What are peerless components?

The peerless components are called light weight components.

What is the difference between the Font and FontMetrics classes?

The FontMetrics class is used to define implementation-specific properties, such as ascent and descent, of a Font object.

What happens when a thread cannot acquire a lock on an object?

If a thread attempts to execute a synchronized method or synchronized statement and is unable to acquire an object's lock, it enters the waiting state until the lock becomes available.

What is the difference between the Reader/Writer class hierarchy and the InputStream/OutputStream class hierarchy?

The Reader/Writer class hierarchy is character-oriented, and the InputStream/OutputStream class hierarchy is byte-oriented.

What classes of exceptions may be caught by a catch clause?

A catch clause can catch any exception that may be assigned to the Throwable type. This includes the Error and Exception types.

What is the difference between throw and throws keywords?

The throw keyword denotes a statement that causes an exception to be initiated. It takes the Exception object to be thrown as argument. The exception will be caught by an immediately encompassing try-catch construction or propagated further up the calling hierarchy.

The throws keyword is a modifier of a method that designates that exceptions may come out of the method, either by virtue of the method throwing the exception itself or because it fails to catch such exceptions that a method it calls may throw.

If a class is declared without any access modifiers, where may the class be accessed?

A class that is declared without any access modifiers is said to have package or friendly access. This means that the class can only be accessed by other classes and interfaces that are defined within the same package.

What is the Map interface?

The Map interface replaces the JDK 1.1 Dictionary class and is used associate keys with values.

Does a class inherit the constructors of its superclass?

A class does not inherit constructors from any of its superclasses.

Name primitive Java types.

The primitive types are byte, char, short, int, long, float, double, and boolean.

Which class should you use to obtain design information about an object?

The Class class is used to obtain information about an object's design.

How can a GUI component handle its own events?

A component can handle its own events by implementing the required event-listener interface and adding itself as its own event listener.

How are the elements of a GridBagLayout organized?

The elements of a GridBagLayout are organized according to a grid. However, the elements are of different sizes and may occupy more than one row or column of the grid. In addition, the rows and columns may have different sizes.

What advantage do Java's layout managers provide over traditional windowing systems?

Java uses layout managers to lay out components in a consistent manner across all windowing platforms. Since Java's layout managers aren't tied to absolute sizing and positioning, they are able to accommodate platform-specific differences among windowing systems.

What are the problems faced by Java programmers who don't use layout managers?

Without layout managers, Java programmers are faced with determining how their GUI will be displayed across multiple windowing systems and finding a common sizing and positioning that will work within the constraints imposed by each windowing system.

What is the difference between static and non-static variables?

A static variable is associated with the class as a whole rather than with specific instances of a class. Non-static variables take on unique values with each object instance.

What is the difference between the paint() and repaint() methods?

The paint() method supports painting via a Graphics object. The repaint() method is used to cause paint() to be invoked by the AWT painting thread.

What is the purpose of the File class?

The File class is used to create objects that provide access to the files and directories of a local file system.

How does multithreading take place on a computer with a single CPU?

The operating system's task scheduler allocates execution time to multiple tasks. By quickly switching between executing tasks, it creates the impression that tasks execute sequentially.

What restrictions are placed on method overloading?

Two methods may not have the same name and argument list but different return types.

What restrictions are placed on method overriding?

Overridden methods must have the same name, argument list, and return type. The overriding method may not limit the access of the method it overrides. The overriding method may not throw any exceptions that may not be thrown by the overridden method.

What is casting?

There are two types of casting, casting between primitive numeric types and casting between object references. Casting between numeric types is used to convert larger values, such as double values, to smaller values, such as byte values. Casting between object references is used to refer to an object by a compatible class, interface, or array type reference.