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For function that manipulate strings, modern object-oriented languages, like C# and Java have immutable strings and return a copy (in newly allocated dynamic memory), while others, like C manipulate the original string unless the programmer copies data to a new string.
By returning a null object (i.e., an empty list) instead, there is no need to verify that the return value is in fact a list. The calling function may simply iterate the list as normal, effectively doing nothing. It is, however, still possible to check whether the return value is a null object (an empty list) and react differently if desired.
clone() is a method in the Java programming language for object duplication. In Java, objects are manipulated through reference variables, and there is no operator for copying an object—the assignment operator duplicates the reference, not the object. The clone() method provides this missing functionality.
Thus, often the only way to use the clone() method is if the class of an object is known, which is contrary to the abstraction principle of using the most generic type possible. For example, if one has a List reference in Java, one cannot invoke clone() on that reference because List specifies no public clone() method.
A method has a return value, a name and usually some parameters initialized when it is called with some arguments. Similar to C++, methods returning nothing have return type declared as void. Unlike in C++, methods in Java are not allowed to have default argument values and methods are usually overloaded instead.
In Java, the signature of a method or a class contains its name and the types of its method arguments and return value, where applicable. The format of signatures is documented, as the language, compiler, and .class file format were all designed together (and had object-orientation and universal interoperability in mind from the start).
For object values, the reference cannot change. This allows the Java compiler to "capture" the value of the variable at run-time and store a copy as a field in the inner class. Once the outer method has terminated and its stack frame has been removed, the original variable is gone but the inner class's private copy persists in the class's own ...
In object-oriented programming, a factory is an object for creating other objects; formally, it is a function or method that returns objects of a varying prototype or class [1] from some method call, which is assumed to be new. [a] More broadly, a subroutine that returns a new object may be referred to as a factory, as in factory method or ...