todeepArray() ?

[Girish Vasmatkar]

Hi Ranchers,well recently i took SCJP 5.0 free assessment exam on sun's website and i was surprised by the fact that it had questions involving methods which K&B didn't mention in the book.for example one of the methods used was ""todeepArray()"" method ,so i just want to know should i also have a look at APIs before taking the real exam?

[Edwin Dalorzo]

I have to say that I am amazed. How are you covering the subjects of the exam without even taking a look at the API?

I think any book that you used should be seen as a reference to cover the subjects and yes, you definitely should go over the API before taking the exam.

[Bert Bates]

Hi Girish,

I just went to the Sun site. I was able to find an old, old sample exam (J025-10) for the 1.2 exam, a fairly old sample exam (J035-10) for the 1.4 exam, and the new sample exam (J065-10) for the new Java 6 exam. I wasn't able to find a sample for 1.5.

In any case, todeepArray() isn't on 1.5 or 1.6. We think that we've covered all the methods you'll need to know, but if we haven't we want to fix that! That said, we would certainly agree that whatever sources you use to study for these Sun Java exams - the APIs MUST be part of what you study!

hth,

Bert

[Girish Vasmatkar]

Hello Bert,

http://www.sun.com/training/certification/assessment/055.jsp

This is the link of the exam i took recently.This is the exam i am talking about.One of the questions also contains Integer.getInteger() method.Please tell me how you think of this exam as a preparation tool.Also i will be having a deep look at the API.But again i send you the link only for the sake of our discussion.Also tell me where can i find API in pdf format?
Thank You.

[Girish Vasmatkar]

Well, i know about most of the important methods that may be asked in the exam and yes i agree with you and i will go through the whole API but seriously tell me do i have to have knowledge of each and every method in the API? Because you never know which method will be picked to frame a question.
Girish

[manny singh]

i also found (SortedSet) class and method tailSet() .it is also not in k&b book

[Bert Bates]

Hi Guys,

I know that Kathy and I have a goal of preparing you 110% for the exam. In other words we want you to understand the fundamentals really well, and we want you to know a superset of the API classes and methods that you'll need to know for the exam. From what I can tell, most of the authors of mock exams have the same philosophy. The result is that when you study from our book, or take mock exams, you will sometimes get questions that have topics that aren't on the real exam.

There are a few new topics on the Java 6 exam (such as tailSet() ), which we've added to the new edition of the book. Other than those new topics, we're pretty sure that what's in the book is everything you'll need to know. If for a moment we take all of the above as a given, there are still a few things that might look confusing:

1 - Some other high quality mock exam might include a topic that's just outside of what's on the real exam. That doesn't make the mock wrong and it doesn't make our book wrong - it's just the 110% rule in action!

2 - You find a topic (like tailSet() ), that isn't in the Java 5 edition of the book. Well this is a little bit tricky - if you already have the Java 5 version we really don't think you need to buy the Java 6 version when it comes out in the next month or two. My belief is that if you have the old book, and if you augment your studies by looking at the new topics listed in Sun's objectives, you'll be covered. I suppose it's possible that that approach might leave a small, small hole in your preparations, but if you've really nailed everything in the Java 5 book, you'll still do well in the exam.

3 - You might get a question on another mock exam that's WAY outside the scope of the real exam. My thought here is to do a little research on this forum and with this forum's FAQ links. I think that you'll be able to find out which mocks are of high quality. The high quality mocks will tend to do a good job of focusing your studies. As always, expect that you'll be learning a little bit more than you'll actually need for the exam. On the other hand, I think that the quality mocks will contain questions that will have practical use 'on the job' - so it should be good anyway.

With all that said, deepToString() isn't on the exam

hth,

Bert

[Vyas Sanzgiri]

I just solved a Sun Practice Exam (not free the paid version) for 1.5 and see a question about deepToArray() so I would be cautious to consider K&B to be the dictionary. Especially when Sun Practice Exams mention this!

[Bert Bates]

Hi Guys,

As always, we make our share of errors! But I'd like to ask if ANYONE remembers getting a question on deepTo in the real exam? Not sure why such a question would be on the practice exams, but I'm pretty sure it's not in the real exam. I'll go back to the 110% rule however, all of the good mock exams probably try to hit 110% of what you need for the real exam - Sun's extra 10% is probably different than K&B's extra 10% which is different than, say, whizlabs extra 10%.

hth,

Bert

[Vyas Sanzgiri]

Thanks Bert for the confirmation.

I would like to add another 30% to the whizlabs statement

[Ruben Soto]

Just wanted to say that todeepArray() is not even in the API (to the best of my knowledge.) It is an imaginary method, and I hope none of these are in the exam.

[Leandro Coutinho]

Ruben Soto wrote:Just wanted to say that todeepArray() is not even in the API (to the best of my knowledge.) It is an imaginary method, and I hope none of these are in the exam.

since 1.5

I'm a little confused. Every array is an object. But an array of primitives can only be convertible to an array of Objects if it has one or more dimensions than the array of Objects. Why?

Well, that's ok. It makes sense. If a primitive is not an Object. You add square brackets and it becomes an Object. So if you add square brackets to the object, you'll need to add one more square brackets to the primitive, so it will continue to be an instance of that thing.

[Ankit Garg]

Leandro Coutinho wrote:I'm a little confused. Every array is an object. But an array of primitives can only be convertible to an array of Objects if it has one or more dimensions than the array of Objects. Why?

I'm also a little confused about what you are trying to say. If there is a one dimensional array of primitives, then it is assignable to Object but not Object[]. If there is a multi dimensional array of primitives, then it is assignable to Object and Object[]