s.apend in the test, what do you think we should do?

Hi,
As mentioned earlier somewhere, there is a fill-in the blank question in the real test which manipulates the string using string.append();
As everybody knows, there is no append() method in the String class. My impression is that Tony Alicia said we should assume
the String class have such a method. and that what I did during my test. Now thinking back, maybe we should not assume that
the String class has append() method, instead we could say there will be a compile error therefore we should leave the
fill in blank? what do you think. the question might come up again in the test just want you to give it some thought

I'm afraid u can't really do anything about this question
Its definitely included to prevent you from scoring 100 %
Why do u think nobody scores 100% in SCJP ???
Microsoft has quite a few qts which are on the same lines.
Atleast Sun has just one such qt.

peter,
I beg to differ from Tony's view point here.
You can be 100% certain that the test will not contain questions that are syntactically incorrect.
The only exception to this are the questions where they want you to tell if a compilation error occurs, which will be one of the answers. Deepak, people have scored 100% in the SCJP tests before. Though I don't have the demographics, you should belive me here

Ajith

Ajit, there IS a question in the real exam with s.append
where s is a String and its a type in question where we need to type the value of s.
Are we supposed to leave it blank ?
What are we supposed to type in there ?

Hi PeterH,
Infact, if you try to run a program where you say s.append(), you will get compile time error("method append() not found in String class"). I am sure you can't use append method in String. So if there is any fill in the blank, I think we should write Compile Time Error. If I am wrong, please tell me.
Sanjana

But "Compile Time Error" is not the value of the string. In fact, there is no way to indicate a compile-time error in this question, even though that would be the best answer. So the best you can do is pretend that "append" was "concat" instead, and answer based on that assumption.

Hi Jim,
You say that you pretend as if it is concat instead of append method & give reply accordingly. But examiner may be testing, append() belongs to which class. On what basis we should assume that it is concat() method they actually mean? Please tell me.
Sanjana

Usually I would advocate taking each question literally and avoiding any assumptions. The problem is that if we do that here, there is no way to indicate the correct answer, which is that a compile error occurred. I suppose we could type "Compiler Error" or "This won't compile" or "String class has no append() method" or "This question sucks" in the text field - but I seriously doubt the testmakers have made their program smart enough to take all of those as valid ansewrs, and I don't know which phrasing is the one they're looking for. At this point, it's obvious something is wrong with the question; we just try to make a guess at what the questioner really meant to say. Personally I can't think of any other changes that make sense for this question, other than replacing append() with concat() - they are pretty similar after all; I can easily imagine that someone got them confused when creating the test. (I have a harder time understanding why it's taken this long to fix the problem, but that's a separate issue.) I think this is more obvious if you see the whole question, which I can't do here. But if you make this substitution, you see that the remaining question actually makes sense, and is a good, logical question to ask based on the exam objectives. I can't think of any other solution that makes any sense to me for this question, so that's my answer.
[This message has been edited by Jim Yingst (edited August 28, 2000).]

Jim,
What about leave the fill-in area, indicating that nothing will be printed, that seem to be more logical than assuming the question needs to be fixed.
Peter

Sorry, I meant leaving the input area blank.

Is you have two strings (s & s1)....then
s.append(s1).....compile time error
s.concat(s1).....new string(s2..which is different from s)

Originally posted by Deepak M:
Ajit, there IS a question in the real exam with s.append
where s is a String and its a type in question where we need to type the value of s.
Are we supposed to leave it blank ?
What are we supposed to type in there ?

Hi,
I took my SCJP today and got the same question being discussed. I just assumed that String class has append() since the question clearly says what will String s be when printed. I took the plunge and it seems to have turned out right. So, my advise is that just assume as Jim says and forget about it. It's quite surprising how Sun has not noticed it!!!