CS201 - Spring 2014 - Class 9

  • exercises

  • sorting
       - what is the sorting problem?
          - given a list of numbers, sort them in some order
       - what are some of the sorting algorithms you may have heard of before?
          - insertion sort
          - selection sort
          - merge sort
          - bubble sort
          - quick sort
       
  • sorting arrays
       - as we saw before, java has a class called Arrays that has some static methods to perform things on arrays
          - we used Arrays.toString before
       - Arrays has a sort method: Arrays.sort
          - it takes an array as a parameter and sorts the array *in place*
             - in place means it does not generate a new array, but mutates the array passed in
             - like our reverse method from the last assignment
          - the return type is void!
       - for example, look at the sortNumsDemo in the SortingArrays class in the Sorting demo

  • sorting things that aren't numbers
       - What about sorting strings? How should we sort them?
          - ideally, alphabetically
       - look at the sortStringsDemo method in the SortingArrays class in the Sorting demo
          - generate a bunch of strings with numbers at the beginning
          - call the Arrays.sort
          - notice that it does the right thing!

  • sorting Cards
       - look at the sortCards method in the SortingArrays class in the Sorting demo
       - What do you think will happen?
       - We get an Exception (error)! Why?
          Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: Card cannot be cast to java.lang.Comparable
          at java.util.ComparableTimSort.countRunAndMakeAscending(ComparableTimSort.java:290)
          at java.util.ComparableTimSort.sort(ComparableTimSort.java:157)
          at java.util.ComparableTimSort.sort(ComparableTimSort.java:146)
          at java.util.Arrays.sort(Arrays.java:472)
          at SortingArrays.sortCards(SortingArrays.java:53)
          at SortingArrays.main(SortingArrays.java:58)

       - How do we know how to sort cards?!?

  • an aside, casting
       - take the following code
          Card c = new Card(...);
          Object o = c;

          - is this legal?
             - yes! Object is a superclass of all classes
       - What if we added this line:
          Card c2 = o;
          
          - is this legal?
             - no! Even though we know that what is in o, Java doesn't, so it's not going to allow it
       - In situations where you know the type of the object you can tell Java this and "cast" the reference into a reference of a new type
          - For example, we can write the code above as:

          Card c = new Card(...);
          Object o = c;
          Card c2 = (Card)o;

          - To cast a object reference, we put the type we'd like to cast it to in parentheses
          - casting tells the Java compiler to change the type of the thing referenced
       - What will happen if we do the following:
          Shape s = new Shape(...);
          Rectangle r = (Rectangle)s;

          - Will Java complain?
             - not when we compile it. We told Java that we knew what we were doing?
          - What will happen when we run the code?
             - ClassCastException!
             - We told java that we knew what we were doing, but at runtime, Java does know the object type and checks it
             - if we try and cast something to a type that we can't, it will complain

  • Back to our Exception above, what do you think is going on?
       - Look at the Arrays class documentation:
          http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Arrays.html

          - there are lots of different variants of sort
          - which one do you think we're using?
             - Object[]
       - The Arrays class allows us to sort anything! However...
       - We have to specify *how* these things are sorted

  • Comparable
       - What information do we need to know to sort an array of objects?
          - have to be able to compare two objects and ask which is larger!

  • Interfaces
       - Java only allows for you to have one superclass (one parent)
          - this is called "single inheritance"
       - Why do you think it does this?
          - What if you had two parents with the same method? Which do you inherit?
       - Are there reasons we might want to have multiple parents?
          - Besides inheriting functionality, it also allows for us to broadcast the types of things that our object can do.
             - For example, because the Rectangle class extends the Shape class, we know that all rectangles have a getArea method
             - This allows Java to check to make sure object have certain functionality
       - To solve this problem, Java has what are called "interfaces"
          - An interface defines the methods a class MUST define/have
          - An interface is NOT a class
          - An interface DOES define a new type

  • Defining an interface
       - to declare a new interface, you define the method headers, but not the bodies of the methods:

          public interface A{
             public void printYeah();
             public int returnANumber();
             public String returnTheString(String s);
          }

  • look at AInterface and BClass in the InterfaceBasics code
       -