Methods

Eric Roberts
CS 106A
January 20, 2010
Once upon a time . . .
 David Parnas
David Parnas is Professor of Computer Science at
Limerick University in Ireland, where he directs
the Software Quality Research Laboratory, and
has also taught at universities in Germany,
Canada, and the United States.
Parnas’s most influential contribution to software
engineering is his groundbreaking 1972 paper
“On the criteria to be used in decomposing
systems into modules,” which laid the foundation
for modern structured programming. This paper
appears in many anthologies and is available on
the web at
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361623
Methods
 A Quick Overview of Methods
• You have been working with methods ever since you wrote
your first Java program in Chapter 2. The run method in
every program is just one example. Most of the programs
you have seen have used other methods as well, such as
println and setColor.
• At the most basic level, a method is a sequence of statements
that has been collected together and given a name. The name
makes it possible to execute the statements much more easily;
instead of copying out the entire list of statements, you can
just provide the method name.
• The following terms are useful when learning about methods:
– Invoking a method using its name is known as calling that method.
– The caller can pass information to a method by using arguments.
– When a method completes its operation, it returns to its caller.
– A method can pass information to the caller by returning a result.
 Methods and Information Hiding
• One of the most important advantages of methods is that they
make it possible for callers to ignore the inner workings of
complex operations.
• When you use a method, it is more important to know what
the method does than to understand exactly how it works.
The underlying details are of interest only to the programmer
who implements a method. Programmers who use a method
as a tool can usually ignore the implementation altogether.
• The idea that callers should be insulated from the details of
method operation is the principle of information hiding,
which is one of the cornerstones of software engineering.
 Methods as Tools for Programmers
• Particularly when you are first learning about programming,
it is important to keep in mind that methods are not the same
as application programs, even though both provide a service
that hides the underlying complexity involved in
computation.
• The key difference is that an application program provides a
service to a user, who is typically not a programmer but
rather someone who happens to be sitting in front of the
computer. By contrast, a method provides a service to a
programmer, who is typically creating some kind of
application.
• This distinction is particularly important when you are trying
to understand how the applications-level concepts of input
and output differ from the programmer-level concepts of
arguments and results. Methods like readInt and println
are used to communicate with the user and play no role in
communicating information from one part of a program to
another.
 Method Calls as Expressions
• Syntactically, method calls in Java are part of the expression
framework. Methods that return a value can be used as terms
in an expression just like variables and constants.
• The Math class in the java.lang package defines several
methods that are useful in writing mathematical expressions.
Suppose, for example, that you need to compute the distance
from the origin to the point (x, y), which is given by
x2 + y2
You can apply the square root function by calling the sqrt
method in the Math class like this:
double distance = Math.sqrt(x * x + y * y);
• Note that you need to include the name of the class along
with the method name. Methods like Math.sqrt that belong
to a class are called static methods.
 Useful Methods in the Math Class
Math.abs(x) Returns the absolute value of x
Math.min(x, y) Returns the smaller of x and y
Math.max(x, y) Returns the larger of x and y
Math.sqrt(x) Returns the square root of x
Math.log(x) Returns the natural logarithm of x (loge x )
Math.exp(x) Returns the inverse logarithm of x (e x )
Math.pow(x, y) Returns the value of x raised to the y power (x y )
Math.sin(theta) Returns the sine of theta, measured in radians
Math.cos(theta) Returns the cosine of theta
Math.tan(theta) Returns the tangent of theta
Math.asin(x) Returns the angle whose sine is x
Math.acos(x) Returns the angle whose cosine is x
Math.atan(x) Returns the angle whose tangent is x
Math.toRadians(degrees) Converts an angle from degrees to radians
Math.toDegrees(radians) Converts an angle from radians to degrees
 Method Calls as Messages
• In object-oriented languages like Java, the act of calling a
method is often described in terms of sending a message to
an object. For example, the method call
rect.setColor(Color.RED);
is regarded metaphorically as sending a message to the rect
object asking it to change its color.
setColor(Color.RED)

• The object to which a message is sent is called the receiver.

• The general pattern for sending a message to an object is

receiver.name(arguments);
 Writing Your Own Methods
• The general form of a method definition is

visibility type name(argument list) {

statements in the method body
}

where visibility indicates who has access to the method, type

indicates what type of value the method returns, name is the
name of the method, and argument list is a list of declarations
for the variables used to hold the values of each argument.
• The usual setting for visibility is private, which means that
the method is available only within its own class. If other
classes need access to it, visibility should be public instead.
• If a method does not return a value, type should be void.
Such methods are sometimes called procedures.
 Returning Values from a Method
• You can return a value from a method by including a return
statement, which is usually written as

return expression;

where expression is a Java expression that specifies the value

you want to return.
• As an example, the method definition
private double feetToInches(double feet) {
return 12 * feet;
}

converts an argument indicating a distance in feet to the

equivalent number of inches, relying on the fact that there are
12 inches in a foot.
 Methods Involving Control Statements
• The body of a method can contain statements of any type,
including control statements. As an example, the following
method uses an if statement to find the larger of two values:

private int max(int x, int y) {

if (x > y) {
return x;
} else {
return y;
}
}

• As this example makes clear, return statements can be used

at any point in the method and may appear more than once.
 The factorial Method
• The factorial of a number n (which is usually written as n! in
mathematics) is defined to be the product of the integers from
1 up to n. Thus, 5! is equal to 120, which is 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5.
• The following method definition uses a for loop to compute
the factorial function:

private int factorial(int n) {

int result = 1;
for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
result *= i;
}
return result;
}
 Nonnumeric Methods
Methods in Java can return values of any type. The following
method, for example, returns the English name of the day of the
week, given a number between 0 (Sunday) and 6 (Saturday):
private String weekdayName(int day) {
switch (day) {
case 0: return "Sunday";
case 1: return "Monday";
case 2: return "Tuesday";
case 3: return "Wednesday";
case 4: return "Thursday";
case 5: return "Friday";
case 6: return "Saturday";
default: return "Illegal weekday";
}
}
 Methods Returning Graphical Objects
• The text includes examples of methods that return graphical
objects. The following method creates a filled circle centered
at the point (x, y), with a radius of r pixels, which is filled
using the specified color:
private GOval createFilledCircle(double x, double y,
double r, Color color) {
GOval circle = new GOval(x - r, y - r, 2 * r, 2 * r);
circle.setFilled(true);
circle.setColor(color);
return circle;
}

• If you are creating a GraphicsProgram that requires many

filled circles in different colors, the createFilledCircle
method turns out to save a considerable amount of code.
 Predicate Methods
• Methods that return Boolean values play an important role in
programming and are called predicate methods.
• As an example, the following method returns true if the first
argument is divisible by the second, and false otherwise:
private boolean isDivisibleBy(int x, int y) {
return x % y == 0;
}

• Once you have defined a predicate method, you can use it just
like any other Boolean value. For example, you can print the
integers between 1 and 100 that are divisible by 7 as follows:
for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
if (isDivisibleBy(i, 7)) {
println(i);
}
}
 Using Predicate Methods Effectively
• New programmers often seem uncomfortable with Boolean
values and end up writing ungainly code. For example, a
beginner might write isDivisibleBy like this:
private boolean isDivisibleBy(int x, int y) {
if (x % y == 0) {
return true
} else {
return false;
}
}

While this code is not technically incorrect, it is inelegant

enough to deserve the bug symbol.
 Using Predicate Methods Effectively
• A similar problem occurs when novices explicitly check to
see if a predicate method returns true. You should be careful
to avoid such redundant tests in your own programs.
for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
if (isDivisibleBy(i, 7) == true) {
println(i);
}
}
 Mechanics of the Method-Calling Process
When you invoke a method, the following actions occur:
1. Java evaluates the argument expressions in the context of the
calling method.
2. Java then copies each argument value into the corresponding
parameter variable, which is allocated in a newly assigned
region of memory called a stack frame. This assignment
follows the order in which the arguments appear: the first
argument is copied into the first parameter variable, and so on.
3. Java then evaluates the statements in the method body, using
the new stack frame to look up the values of local variables.
4. When Java encounters a return statement, it computes the
return value and substitutes that value in place of the call.
5. Java then discards the stack frame for the called method and
returns to the caller, continuing from where it left off.
 The Combinations Function
• To illustrate method calls, the text uses a function C(n, k) that
computes the combinations function, which is the number of
ways one can select k elements from a set of n objects.
• Suppose, for example, that you have a set of five coins: a
penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, and a dollar:

How many ways are there to select two coins?

penny + nickel nickel + dime dime + quarter quarter + dollar
penny + dime nickel + quarter dime + dollar
penny + quarter nickel + dollar
penny + dollar for a total of 10 ways.
 Combinations and Factorials
• Fortunately, mathematics provides an easier way to compute
the combinations function than by counting all the ways. The
value of the combinations function is given by the formula
n!
C(n, k) =
k ! x (n – k) !
• Given that you already have a factorial method, is easy to
turn this formula directly into a Java method, as follows:
private int combinations(int n, int k) {
return factorial(n) / (factorial(k) * factorial(n - k));
}

• The next slide simulates the operation of combinations and

factorial in the context of a simple run method.
 The Combinations Program
public void run() {
int n =
private readInt("Enter
int combinations(intnumber
n, of
intobjects
k) { in the set (n): ");
int k = readInt("Enter
return factorial(n) / number
( to be chosen
factorial(k) * (k): "); - k) );
factorial(n
private int factorial(int
+ n + ", " +n) k {+ ") = " + combinations(n, k) );
} println("C("
int result 120
= 1;
} 2 6
for ( int i = 1 ; i <= n ; i++ ) { n 10 k
result *= i; n k
5 2
} 5 2
n result i
return result;
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skip simulation
 Exercise: Finding Perfect Numbers
• Greek mathematicians took a special interest in numbers that
are equal to the sum of their proper divisors (a proper divisor
of n is any divisor less than n itself). They called such
numbers perfect numbers. For example, 6 is a perfect
number because it is the sum of 1, 2, and 3, which are the
integers less than 6 that divide evenly into 6. Similarly, 28 is
a perfect number because it is the sum of 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14.
• For the rest of this class, we’re going to design and
implement a Java program that finds all the perfect numbers
between two limits. For example, if the limits are 1 and
10000, the output should look like this:
FindPerfect

The perfect numbers between 1 and 10000 are:

6
28
496
8128
The End