Doubt with cert objective - accessing object fields

[Andy James]

Hey Ranchers,

Are the object fields same as instance variables?

For example, in the following class, which is an object field - name or myName?

class ABC {
    private String myName = null;
    public void setName (String value) {myName = name;}
    public String getName() { return myName; }
}

Are the field names derived from the exact names of the instance variable or from the method names?

Cheers
Andy

[James Boswell]

myName is an instance variable here. Nothing is derived although modern IDEs can generate setter and getter methods based upon the names of instance variables.

[Roel De Nijs]

That's a class that won't compile, because name is not an existing parameter.

myName is the instance variable (or object field as you like)
value is the parameter

In real world, you have something like this:

class ABC {
  private String name;
}

And then as James already mentioned you let your IDE generate the necessary getters and setters (it's a lot faster than typing them yourself). So you'll end up with this class:

class ABC {
  private String name;
  public String getName() { return name; }
  public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; }
}