Invoking an Object's Method

An object consists of both variables (state information) and methods (small programs). Both of these are called members of the object. Java uses dot notation for both:

referenceToAnObject.memberOfObject

For example, to invoke the length() method of the object named str1 do this:

                                                          
len  = str1.length();  

Method names have () at their end. Often there is additional information inside the (), but they are required even if they contain nothing. The above method evaluates to an integer, 15, which is assigned to the int variable len.