imports

[Kathy Lynch]

I think I am missing something fundamental here. I have the understanding that when you have an import statement like:
import something.somethingElse.*;
that imports all classes in the somethingElse package. But sometimes I get an error unless I explicitly say
import something.somethingElse.MyClass;
Can someone tell my why I sometimes have to explicitly list the class and othertimes package.* works?
Thanks in advance!

[Paul Keohan]

I don't know if this is the answer but sometimes I make mistakes here by assuming that .* will import ALL subdirectories. It only imports the files that are in this particular directory.

import com.mystuff.*;
will not import the following class
com.mystuff.classes.myFirstClass
but it will import
com.mystuff.mySecondClass

Hope this helps.....
Paul

[Art Metzer]

Paul's right.
I just thought I'd add, that's why, if you ever use event listeners with the AWT, you have to say at the beginning of your class:

<font size="2.0">
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

You won't get away with just:

<font size="2.0">
import java.awt.*;

Art

[Cindy Glass]

Also there are cases where more than one class that you are importing contains a class with the same name.
Import java.util.*;
Import java.sql.*;
Now when you want to use the Date class, you have to explicitly name which Date that you want to use.