B | Java Garage

bean: Beans are standard Java classes that conform to certain design and naming conventions (private variables and getter and setter methods ). When people say, "JavaBean," they mean something that comes from the java.beans package. JavaBeans and Enterprise JavaBeans have very little relation (no more than, say, Java and JavaScript). The original purpose of beans was to make it easy for software vendors to write programs (such as IDEs) to allow users to visually manipulate the software component represented by the bean (like in VB). To achieve this, beans all share the following characteristics: Properties, Customization, Persistence, Events, and Introspection.

bit: Contracted form of binary digit , the smallest unit of information in a computer. A bit is capable of holding one of two possible values: on or off, commonly represented as true or false, or 0 or 1. The term is said to have been coined by the mathematician Claude Shannon.

bitwise operator: An operator that manipulates individual bits within a byte, generally by comparison, or by shifting the bits to the left or right.

block: Any Java code between curly braces. For instance: { int i = 0; } is a block of code. Colloquially, developers refer to a "try/ catch block."

boolean: One of the primitives in Java, a boolean represents either a true or false value. The default value is false. Note that boolean represents not a 1 or 0, but the literal value true or false.

bounding box: Used in graphical user interface (GUI) programming, refers to the smallest geometric area surrounding a shape.

bounds: Used to constrain the types that you can invoke on wildcards in generic method definitions. A lower bound means that the runtime value supplied for the wildcard must be higher up the inheritance hierarchy than the wildcard lower bound. An upper bound indicates that when you supply an actual type at runtime, it must be a subclass of the upper bound type. A lower bound is expressed with ? extends T . Say you wanted to allow your wildcard to be " replaced " at runtime with only classes that are subclasses of java.lang.Exception. You would write ? Extends Exception in your method definition. An upper bound is expressed with ? super T . You can also use a parameter type as the bound of your wildcard, like this: ? extends E . This means, "the argument supplied to this method at runtime must be a subclass of whatever the actual parameter type supplied is."; See also [wildcard]

break: A keyword in Java used to resume program execution at the next statement immediately following the current statement, except when a label is used, in which case execution returns to the label.

byte: A Java keyword used to declare a primitive variable of type byte . Eight bits form one byte. A byte is a signed integer in Java; its minimum value is -27 and its maximum positive value is 27-1.

bytecode: Machine-independent code that is generated by the Java compiler and executed by the Java interpreter. The code in a .class file is bytecode, serving as input to the Java Virtual Machine. Bytecode can also be converted to native machine code by a Just In Time compiler.