update and repaint

[Rich Wright]

I'm a little confused about update() and repaint(). If you need to refresh part of the screen that was hidden by another window would you call the repaint() method (The repaint() method would schedule a call to the update() method).
Thanks for your help

[Pawel Veselov]

You are correct.
The difference between update() and repaint() is that update has Graphics instance as an argument, so it does know where to draw on.
repaint() is a empty scheduler, that doesn't make a repaint. This allow you to call repaint() and continue execution. The update() will be called in another thread (AWT-Motif, if I am not mistaken)
To repaint piece of a component, you can use repaint(int, int, int, int). In that case, update() will received clipped Graphics.

------------------
With best of best regards, Pawel S. Veselov ( aka Black Angel )