Confirmation

[Hama Kamal]

hi all,,

me and a couple of friends discussed below two points ,,, but i think we need some body else's idea bout them
1- in the below code we can not say that TestIt class Has-a animal since ( Animal a = new Animal();) is declared inside a method... please confirm

class Animal {}   
class Dog extends Animal {}   
class TestIt {   
public static void main (String [] args){   
Animal a = new Animal();   
}   
}  

2- in the below code we can not say that TestIt class Has-a Dog when line one is invoked ,,, and we can not say that TestIt class Has-a Animal when line tow is invoked, please confirm

class Animal {}   
class Dog extends Animal {}   
class TestIt {
Animal a = new Dog();// line one 
Dog a = new Dog(); // line two
   
public static void main (String [] args){   
   
}   
}  

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

can you justify your answer?

[Hama Kamal]

Seetharaman Venkatasamy wrote:can you justify your answer?

well, this is what i get from our discussion
1- for the first case since the Reference variable is declared inside the method it will get vanished as the method runs and completes.
2-for the second case HAS-a only concerns the Reference variable not the Object being created.

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

For me, your conclusion seems to be fine. we will see what other folks will tell!

<edit>
one thing I can say, your example is example for composition(kind of HAS-A)
</edit>

[Michael Schubert]

I don't know about line two.
TestIt HAS-A Dog, but because Dog IS-A Animal, I think you could also say TestIt HAS-A Animal.

[nitin sethi]

Hama Kamal wrote:

Seetharaman Venkatasamy wrote:can you justify your answer?

well, this is what i get from our discussion
1- for the first case since the Reference variable is declared inside the method it will get vanished as the method runs and completes.
2-for the second case HAS-a only concerns the Reference variable not the Object being created.

class Animal {}   
class Dog extends Animal {}   
class TestIt {
Animal a = new Dog();// line one 
Dog a = new Dog(); // line two
   
public static void main (String [] args){   
   
}   
}  

When only line 1 is present in the class TestIt, we can only say that TestIt HAS-A Animal. We can't say TestIt HAS-A Dog as we can't use a Dog-specific stuffs in the class TestIt.

With only line 2, its obvious that the class TestIt HAS-A Dog.