Class Object and Method

The Method Body

The method body is where all of the action of a method takes place; the method body contains all of the legal Java instructions that implement the method.     Returning a Value from a Method We declare a method's return type in its method declaration. Within the body of the method, we use the return operator to return the value. Any method that is not declared void must contain a return statement. The Stack class declares the isEmpty method, which returns a boolean:   public boolean isEmpty() { if (items.size() == 0) return true; else return false; }     The data type of the return value must match the method's return type; we can't return an Object type from a method declared to return an integer. The isEmpty method returns either the boolean value true or false, depending on the outcome of a test.   The isEmpty method returns a primitive type. Methods also can return a reference type.   For example, Stack declares the pop method that returns the Object reference type:   public synchronized Object pop() { int len = items.size(); Object obj = null; if (len == 0) throw new EmptyStackException(); obj = items.elementAt(len - 1); items.removeElementAt(len - 1); return obj; }