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In object-oriented computer programming, a null object is an object with no referenced value or with defined neutral (null) behavior.The null object design pattern, which describes the uses of such objects and their behavior (or lack thereof), was first published as "Void Value" [1] and later in the Pattern Languages of Program Design book series as "Null Object".
For example, if a bank-account class provides a getBalance() accessor method to retrieve the current balance (rather than directly accessing the balance data fields), then later revisions of the same code can implement a more complex mechanism for balance retrieval (e.g., a database fetch), without the dependent code needing to be changed. The ...
If a class does not allow calling code to access internal object data and permits access through methods only, this is also a form of information hiding. Some languages (Java, for example) let classes enforce access restrictions explicitly, for example, denoting internal data with the private keyword and designating methods intended for use by ...
An example of the application of marker interfaces from the Java programming language is the Serializable interface: package java.io ; public interface Serializable { } A class implements this interface to indicate that its non- transient data members can be written to an ObjectOutputStream .
The syntax of Java is the set of rules defining how a Java program is written and interpreted. The syntax is mostly derived from C and C++. Unlike C++, Java has no global functions or variables, but has data members which are also regarded as global variables. All code belongs to classes and all values are objects.
A lazy copy is an implementation of a deep copy. When initially copying an object, a (fast) shallow copy is used. A counter is also used to track how many objects share the data. When the program wants to modify an object, it can determine if the data is shared (by examining the counter) and can do a deep copy if needed.
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Bot is useful in typing the "leaf nodes" of polymorphic data structures. For example, List(Bot) is a good type for nil. Bot is a natural type for the "null pointer" value (a pointer which does not point to any object) of languages like Java: in Java, the null type is the universal subtype of reference types.