Java Puzzlers - Traps, Pitfalls, And Corner Cases



Addison Wesley Professional | ISBN: 0-321-33678-X | English | CHM | 304 Pages | Size: 1.24 MB

Introduction
This book is filled with brainteasers about the Java programming language and its core libraries. Anyone with a working knowledge of Java can understand these puzzles, but many of them are tough enough to challenge even the most experienced programmer. Don't feel bad if you can't solve them. They are grouped loosely according to the features they use, but don't assume that the trick to a puzzle is related to its chapter heading; we reserve the right to mislead you.
Most of the puzzles exploit counterintuitive or obscure behaviors that can lead to bugs. These behaviors are known as traps, pitfalls, and corner cases. Every platform has them, but Java has far fewer than other platforms of comparable power. The goal of the book is to entertain you with puzzles while teaching you to avoid the underlying traps and pitfalls. By working through the puzzles, you will become less likely to fall prey to these dangers in your code and more likely to spot them in code that you are reviewing or revising.
This book is meant to be read with a computer at your side. To get the most out of the puzzles, you'll need a Java development environment, such as Sun's JDK [JDK-5.0]. It should support release 5.0, as some of the puzzles rely on features introduced in this release. You can download the source code for the puzzles from [url=http://e45.org/?www.javapuzzlers.com]E45.org[/url]. Unless you're a glutton for punishment, we recommend that you do this before solving the puzzles. It's a heck of a lot easier than typing them in yourself.
Most of the puzzles take the form of a short program that appears to do one thing but actually does something else. It's your job to figure out what the program does. To get the most out of these puzzles, we recommend that you take this approach:

1.Study the program and try to predict its behavior without using a computer. If you don't see a trick, keep looking.
2.Once you think you know what the program does, run it. Did it do what you thought it would? If not, can you come up with an explanation for the behavior you observed?
3.Think about how you might fix the program, assuming it is broken.
3.Then and only then, read the solution.

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