Ques 189. Explain the usage of Java packages.
This is a way to organize files when a project consists of multiple modules. It also helps resolve naming conflicts when different packages have classes with the same names. Packages access level also allows you to protect data from being used by the non-authorized classes.
e.g.
java.lang — basic language functionality and fundamental types
java.util — collection data structure classes
java.nio — the New I/O framework for Java
java.net — networking operations, sockets, DNS lookups
java.security — key generation, encryption and decryption
java.sql — Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to access databases
java.awt — basic hierarchy of packages for native GUI components
javax.swing — hierarchy of packages for platform-independent rich GUI components
java.applet — classes for creating an applet
Ques 190. If a class is located in a package, what do you need to change in the OS environment to be able to use it?
You need to add a directory or a jar file that contains the package directories to the CLASSPATH environment variable. Lets say a class Employee belongs to a package com.xyz.hr; and is located in the file c:/dev/com.xyz.hr.Employee.java. In this case, you'd need to add c:/dev to the variable CLASSPATH. If this class contains the method main(), you could test it from a command prompt window as follows:
c:>java com.xyz.hr.Employee