Java is the future !: What are some potential trips/traps in the SCJP exam?

Sunday, April 24, 2011

What are some potential trips/traps in the SCJP exam?


  • Two top-level public classes cannot be in the same source file.
  • main() cannot call an instance (non-static) method.
  • Methods can have the same name as the constructor(s).
  • Watch for thread initiation with classes that don't have a run() method.
  • Local classes cannot access non-final variables.
  • Case statements must have values within permissible range.
  • Watch for Math class being an option for immutable classes.
  • instanceOf is not the same as instanceof.
  • Constructors can be private.
  • Assignment statements can be mistaken for a comparison; e.g., if(a=true)...
  • Watch for System.exit() in try-catch-finally blocks.
  • Watch for uninitialized variable references with no path of proper initialization.
  • Order of try-catch-finally blocks matters.
  • main() can be declared final.
  • -0.0 == 0.0 is true.
  • A class without abstract methods can still be declared abstract.
  • Map does not implement Collection.
  • Dictionary is a class, not an interface.
  • Collection (singular) is an Interface, but Collections (plural) is a helper class.
  • Class declarations can come in any order (e.g., derived first, base next, etc.).
  • Forward references to variables gives a compiler error.
  • Multi-dimensional arrays can be "sparse" -- i.e., if you imagine the array as a matrix, every row need not have the same number of columns.
  • Arrays, whether local or class-level, are always initialized
  • Strings are initialized to null, not empty string.
  • An empty string is not the same as a null reference.
  • A declaration cannot be labelled.
  • continue must be in a loop (e.g., for, do, while). It cannot appear in case constructs.
  • Primitive array types can never be assigned to each other, even though the primitives themselves can be assigned. For example, ArrayofLongPrimitives = ArrayofIntegerPrimitives gives compiler error even though longvar = intvar is perfectly valid.
  • A constructor can throw any exception.
  • Initializer blocks are executed in the order of declaration.
  • Instance initializers are executed only if an object is constructed.
  • All comparisons involving NaN and a non-NaN always result in false.
  • Default type of a numeric literal with a decimal point is double.
  • int and long operations / and % can throw an ArithmeticException, while float and double / and % never will (even in case of division by zero).
  • == gives compiler error if the operands are cast-incompatible.
  • You can never cast objects of sibling classes (sharing the same parent).
  • equals() returns false if the object types are different. It does not raise a compiler error.
  • No inner class (non-static inner class) can have a static member.
  • File class has no methods to deal with the contents of the file.
  • InputStream and OutputStream are abstract classes.

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