public static void main(String... _)

Hello!

Today I found out that you can create a parameter list of variable length in a method declaration. When I read further, I stumbled upon this strange notation:

I tried it and it worked without any errors. Now I know what the String... does, but I cannot find out what the underline means. Is it a new form of writing an identifier you're sure not to use again in your code?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Lee

It's your string variable name for the var-arg.

Ah, so "_" is a valid variable name? If so, I'm slightly embarrassed, but thank you so much for the clarification!

Lee Quixotic wrote:Ah, so "_" is a valid variable name?

Syntactically valid? Yes. Reasonable to use in real-world code? No.

Jeff Verdegan wrote:

Lee Quixotic wrote:Ah, so "_" is a valid variable name?

Syntactically valid? Yes. Reasonable to use in real-world code? No.

And I'll go further than that. DON'T put '_'s in variables names at all, unless you're specifically asked to. It's a convention used in Python, C++ (and, I believe, perl), and marks you out as a Java "foreigner".

The same is true of '$', which is also valid, but DON'T USE IT.

Winston

The other point that should be mentioned is that the main method is defined to take a string array -- which holds the command line parameters. It just so happens that using var-args works because var-args are implemented as arrays. Regardless, you should be not doing that -- assuming you mean the main method of the program that is.

Henry

Winston Gutkowski wrote:The same is true of '$', which is also valid, but DON'T USE IT.

Winston, what about "m" for mMyClassScopedField or "s" for sMyStaticClassScopedField?

I remember running into those deep in the bowels of something and feeling kind of glad to be reminded how they were declared.

Paul Witten wrote:what about "m" for mMyClassScopedField or "s" for sMyStaticClassScopedField?

Both those things ought to be forgotten. You can find more about them by googling for “Hungarian Notation”. Note there is a kind of “Hungarian Notation”, which is all right to use, according to Joel Spolsky.

Winston Gutkowski wrote:It's a convention used in Python, C++ (and, I believe, perl)...

In perl, $_ is a language defined variable with special meaning.

fred rosenberger wrote:In perl, $_ is a language defined variable with special meaning.

Ah, that's the chap. It's been so long...

Winston

Henry Wong wrote:The other point that should be mentioned is that the main method is defined to take a string array -- which holds the command line parameters. It just so happens that using var-args works because var-args are implemented as arrays. Regardless, you should be not doing that -- assuming you mean the main method of the program that is.

I'm really thankful for this information, for I otherwise would have continued to use var-args as my main method parameter.
Thank you for all the other replies and advises, too!

Henry Wong wrote:The other point that should be mentioned is that the main method is defined to take a string array -- which holds the command line parameters. It just so happens that using var-args works because var-args are implemented as arrays. Regardless, you should be not doing that -- assuming you mean the main method of the program that is.

Section 12.1.4 of the Java Language Specification explains that either the version with a string array or the version with varargs is acceptable - so, the language specification officially says it works with varargs; it's not just an implementation detail that the varargs version also works, because it happens to be implemented with arrays.

So there's not really a reason so that you shouldn't do that - it's just that varargs are a relatively new feature in Java (it was added in Java 5) and most people are used to the version with a string array.