B.4. Instance Variables, set Methods and get Methods

In Appendix A, we declared all of an application’s variables in the application’s main method. Variables declared in the body of a particular method are known as local variables and can be used only in that method. When that method terminates, the values of its local variables are lost. Recall from Section 1.8 that an object has attributes that are carried with it as it’s used in a program. Such attributes exist before a method is called on an object, while the method is executing and after the method completes execution.

A class normally consists of one or more methods that manipulate the attributes that belong to a particular object of the class. Attributes are represented as variables in a class declaration. Such variables are called fields and are declared inside a class declaration but outside the bodies of the class’s method declarations. When each object of a class maintains its own copy of an attribute, the field that represents the attribute is also known as an instance variable—each object (instance) of the class has a separate instance of the variable in memory. The example in this section demonstrates a GradeBook class that contains a courseName instance variable to represent a particular GradeBook object’s course name.