Assert Yourself

Rogers Cadenhead

Sunday, September 15th, 2002

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Because Linux is now one of the primary platforms for Java development, developers have good reason to take advantage of each new Java release as soon as it’s available. Java 2 Standard Edition version 1.4 (J2SE 1.4), the fifth major release of Java, was released back in March and is packed full of valuable new features. According to “Java in a Nutshell” author David Flanagan, there are 62 percent more classes and interfaces in J2SE 1.4 than its predecessor, Java 1.3.

If you haven’t upgraded or tried J2SE 1.4 yet, you can download it from Sun’s Web site at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/download.html. Linux users can install it in two forms: a Red Hat RPM shell script and a GNUZIP tar shell script. J2SE 1.4 includes the Java Runtime Environment, an interpreter for users running Java programs, and the Java 2 Software Development Kit, a set of packages and command-line tools that can be used to write, compile, run, and debug Java programs.

This month’s column continues our look at J2SE 1.4. The J2SE 1.4 chained exception feature was covered in June (available online at http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-06/java_01.html), and the new Java regular expression classes were covered in July (also available online at http://www.linuxmagazine/2002-07/java_01.html). This month we introduce the new assert feature.

A Shiny New Keyword

Of all the new offerings in J2SE 1.4, the one getting the most attention is Sun’s addition of a new keyword, assert. Keywords don’t get added often to the…

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