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Constructs a new object.
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| protected Object | clone()
Creates and returns a copy of this object.
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| boolean | equals(Object obj)
Indicates whether some other object is "equal to" this one.
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| protected void | finalize()
Deprecated.
The finalization mechanism is inherently problematic.
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| Class<?> | getClass()
Returns the runtime class of this Object.
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| int | hashCode()
Returns a hash code value for the object.
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| void | notify()
Wakes up a single thread that is waiting on this object's
monitor.
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| void | notifyAll()
Wakes up all threads that are waiting on this object's monitor.
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| String | toString()
Returns a string representation of the object.
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| void | wait()
Causes the current thread to wait until it is awakened, typically
by being notified or interrupted.
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| void | wait(long timeoutMillis)
Causes the current thread to wait until it is awakened, typically
by being notified or interrupted, or until a
certain amount of real time has elapsed.
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| void | wait(long timeoutMillis, int nanos)
Causes the current thread to wait until it is awakened, typically
by being notified or interrupted, or until a
certain amount of real time has elapsed.
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The actual result type is Class<? extends |X|> where |X| is the erasure of the static type of the expression on which getClass is called. For example, no cast is required in this code fragment:
Number n = 0;
Class<? extends Number> c = n.getClass();
The general contract of hashCode is:
As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (The hashCode may or may not be implemented as some function of an object's memory address at some point in time.)
The equals method implements an equivalence relation on non-null object references:
The equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects; that is, for any non-null reference values x and y, this method returns true if and only if x and y refer to the same object (x == y has the value true).
Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCode method whenever this method is overridden, so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes.
By convention, the returned object should be obtained by calling super.clone. If a class and all of its superclasses (except Object) obey this convention, it will be the case that x.clone().getClass() == x.getClass().
By convention, the object returned by this method should be independent of this object (which is being cloned). To achieve this independence, it may be necessary to modify one or more fields of the object returned by super.clone before returning it. Typically, this means copying any mutable objects that comprise the internal "deep structure" of the object being cloned and replacing the references to these objects with references to the copies. If a class contains only primitive fields or references to immutable objects, then it is usually the case that no fields in the object returned by super.clone need to be modified.
The method clone for class Object performs a specific cloning operation. First, if the class of this object does not implement the interface Cloneable, then a CloneNotSupportedException is thrown. Note that all arrays are considered to implement the interface Cloneable and that the return type of the clone method of an array type T[] is T[] where T is any reference or primitive type. Otherwise, this method creates a new instance of the class of this object and initializes all its fields with exactly the contents of the corresponding fields of this object, as if by assignment; the contents of the fields are not themselves cloned. Thus, this method performs a "shallow copy" of this object, not a "deep copy" operation.
The class Object does not itself implement the interface Cloneable, so calling the clone method on an object whose class is Object will result in throwing an exception at run time.
The toString method for class Object returns a string consisting of the name of the class of which the object is an instance, the at-sign character `@', and the unsigned hexadecimal representation of the hash code of the object. In other words, this method returns a string equal to the value of: getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())
The awakened thread will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened thread will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened thread enjoys no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. A thread becomes the owner of the object's monitor in one of three ways:
Only one thread at a time can own an object's monitor.
The awakened threads will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened threads will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened threads enjoy no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. See the notify method for a description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of a monitor.
In all respects, this method behaves as if wait(0L, 0) had been called. See the specification of the wait(long, int) method for details.
In all respects, this method behaves as if wait(timeoutMillis, 0) had been called. See the specification of the wait(long, int) method for details.
The current thread must own this object's monitor lock. See the notify method for a description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of a monitor lock.
This method causes the current thread (referred to here as T) to place itself in the wait set for this object and then to relinquish any and all synchronization claims on this object. Note that only the locks on this object are relinquished; any other objects on which the current thread may be synchronized remain locked while the thread waits.
Thread T then becomes disabled for thread scheduling purposes and lies dormant until one of the following occurs:
The thread T is then removed from the wait set for this object and re-enabled for thread scheduling. It competes in the usual manner with other threads for the right to synchronize on the object; once it has regained control of the object, all its synchronization claims on the object are restored to the status quo ante - that is, to the situation as of the time that the wait method was invoked. Thread T then returns from the invocation of the wait method. Thus, on return from the wait method, the synchronization state of the object and of thread T is exactly as it was when the wait method was invoked.
A thread can wake up without being notified, interrupted, or timing out, a so-called spurious wakeup. While this will rarely occur in practice, applications must guard against it by testing for the condition that should have caused the thread to be awakened, and continuing to wait if the condition is not satisfied. See the example below.
For more information on this topic, see section 14.2, "Condition Queues," in Brian Goetz and others' Java Concurrency in Practice (Addison-Wesley, 2006) or Item 69 in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java, Second Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2008).
If the current thread is interrupted by any thread before or while it is waiting, then an InterruptedException is thrown. The interrupted status of the current thread is cleared when this exception is thrown. This exception is not thrown until the lock status of this object has been restored as described above.
The general contract of finalize is that it is invoked if and when the Java™ virtual machine has determined that there is no longer any means by which this object can be accessed by any thread that has not yet died, except as a result of an action taken by the finalization of some other object or class which is ready to be finalized. The finalize method may take any action, including making this object available again to other threads; the usual purpose of finalize, however, is to perform cleanup actions before the object is irrevocably discarded. For example, the finalize method for an object that represents an input/output connection might perform explicit I/O transactions to break the connection before the object is permanently discarded.
The finalize method of class Object performs no special action; it simply returns normally. Subclasses of Object may override this definition.
The Java programming language does not guarantee which thread will invoke the finalize method for any given object. It is guaranteed, however, that the thread that invokes finalize will not be holding any user-visible synchronization locks when finalize is invoked. If an uncaught exception is thrown by the finalize method, the exception is ignored and finalization of that object terminates.
After the finalize method has been invoked for an object, no further action is taken until the Java virtual machine has again determined that there is no longer any means by which this object can be accessed by any thread that has not yet died, including possible actions by other objects or classes which are ready to be finalized, at which point the object may be discarded.
The finalize method is never invoked more than once by a Java virtual machine for any given object.
Any exception thrown by the finalize method causes the finalization of this object to be halted, but is otherwise ignored.
A subclass should avoid overriding the finalize method unless the subclass embeds non-heap resources that must be cleaned up before the instance is collected. Finalizer invocations are not automatically chained, unlike constructors. If a subclass overrides finalize it must invoke the superclass finalizer explicitly. To guard against exceptions prematurely terminating the finalize chain, the subclass should use a try-finally block to ensure super.finalize() is always invoked. For example, @Override protected void finalize() throws Throwable { try { ... // cleanup subclass state } finally { super.finalize(); } }
Throws: Throwable - the Exception raised by this method See Also: WeakReference, PhantomReference See The Java™ Language Specification: 12.6 Finalization of Class InstancesReport a bug or suggest an enhancement
For further API reference and developer documentation see the Java SE Documentation, which contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.
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