More Constructors

Constructors can be overloaded, just like other methods, which means that you can provide multiple constructors with different parameters. Java knows which constructor to invoke by matching the arguments of the new command with the parameters of the constructors.

It is very common to have one constructor that takes no arguments (shown above), and one constructor that takes a parameter list that is identical to the list of instance variables. For example:

The names and types of the parameters are exactly the same as the names and types of the instance variables. All the constructor does is copy the information from the parameters to the instance variables.

If you go back and look at the documentation for Points and Rectangles, you will see that both classes provide constructors like this. Overloading constructors provides the flexibility to create an object first and then fill in the blanks, or to collect all the information before creating the object.

So far this might not seem very interesting, and in fact it is not. Writing constructors is a boring, mechanical process. Once you have written two, you will find that you can churn them out in your sleep, just by looking at the list of instance variables.