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Ans. final keyword have meaning only to referenced and not the value. It means that the specified reference cannot be dereferenced. It doesn't control the value assigned to the memory that's being referenced. This is the reason that final object references doesn't mean that the object is immutable but means that the reference cannot be changed to point to new object.
In case of primitive types too, when we assign a reference to another, values are passed and not the object reference, and hence a new placeholder is created in memory with the same value. That is why final to that context means that you cannot change the assigned memory and there is no way we can have that memory place have another value.
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Ans. Yes, it will compile without error. final in this context means that the reference hm cannot be assigned to a new hash map but didn't restrict from changing the state of collection already held by hm.
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Ans. Objective of constant variable is to provide a context to the value and provide a single point of change. In terms of context, i don't see much need for having constant name for null as null is already self explanatory. In terms of providing single point of change, it doesn't make much sense as it would necessitate that all such placeholders either hold null or a common value.
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Q6. If we have to maintain a value "31" denoting "number of days in a month" as constant variable, Which of the following is the best constant name and Why ?
Constant should be such that it uniquely identifies the value it holds and context of the value. THIRTY_ONE uniquely identifies the value but doesn't express the context. NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_MONTH expresses the context but doesn't specify the value clearly as different month can have different number of days.
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Q7. If we have to maintain a value "7" denoting "number of days in a week" as constant variable, Which of the following is the best constant name and Why ?
Constant should be such that it uniquely identifies the value it holds and context of the value. SEVEN uniquely identifies the value but doesn't express the context.
Though NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_WEEK and NUMBER_OF_DAYS_IN_WEEK_7 makes sense in terms of unique value identification and context but 7 at the end of constant name appears useless as all weeks have 7 days and hence it's the only value it can hold. If it would have been "number of days in a month", it would have made sense to include number of days at the end like
Ans. Better Control - If the value is being used at multiple locations , that can be controlled better from single place. Any change would only require making single change.
Meaning , Aliasing and Better Readability - Sometimes its easy to read the value by its meaning or alias ( 0 as ZERO or 0 as NEUTRAL_VALUE ).
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Which of the following is wrong for final instance variables ?
They cannot be changed after initialization
They can be initialized directly within static method
They can be declared and initialized together at the same place
They can be initialized within constructor
Q10. Will the static block be executed in the following code ? Why ?
class Test { static { System.out.println("Why I am not executing "); } public static final int param=20; }
public class Demo { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(Test.param); } }
Ans. No the static block won't get executed as the referenced variable in the Test class is final. Compiler replaces the content of the final variable within Demo.main method and hence actually no reference to Test class is made.
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Ans. Final makes sure that the value doesn't change after initialization and static makes sure that there is only one copy that can be shared across objects.
Making it non static will unnecessarily create a different copy per object wherein the same value will kept for all copies ( as its final and cannot be changed ).
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Q13. Which of the following is not true for final variables ?
a. They cannot be changed after initialization b. They can be initialized within static method c. They can be declared and initialized together at the same place d. They can be initialized within constructor
Ans. They can be initialized within static method
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Which of the following is wrong for final instance variables ?
