MARQUES exam 2, q 5

[sarim raza]

Question 5)
Why might you define a method as native?
1) To get to access hardware that Java does not know about
2) To define a new data type such as an unsigned integer
3) To write optimised code for performance in a language such as C/C++
4) To overcome the limitation of the private scope of a method
//DONT HAVE A CLUE WHY 1 IS TRUE I THOUGHT NATIVE WAS ONLY USED FOR NATIVE LANGUAGES AND DID NOT HAVE ANY RELEVANCE TO HARDWARE ???

[saumil shukla]

Sarim,
Java is platform independant and hence if it want's to access say a printer throu printers driver then it needs to call that native program generally written in C.

[Vlad G]

Java have no means for direct hardware acces, your Java code is pretty much limeted by the API exposed through the JDK. If you want to access arbitrary harware devices from Java you need to use some sort of library written in C/C++ or any other language and complied into native platform binary code and call it over JNI.
regards,
VG.