Methods 

• As we said earlier in our discussion of object-oriented programing, methods are the verbs of objects. Methods, like subroutines in procedural-oriented programming, are the basic unit of funtionality of an object. They are a body of executable code contained within a class which can be used to effect an instantiated object of the class. 
• Methods consist of the following components:
• A method name 
• A list of inputs which may be empty 
• A return type which may be "void" if the method returns nothing 
• The code to perform some action 

Actually, some methods, such as abstract methods, do not require executable code.

• Consider the following code snippet: 

int add(int a, int b)
  {
  return (a+b);
  }

• In this case, we have created a method which adds two integers passed to it as arguments and then returns the result. The method is named add and might be used in your code with a line such as the following in which mySum is set to "7": 

int mySum = add(3, 4)

Additional Resources:

• Learning to Write Java 
• Introducing Java (TM) - Your First Applet 
• Java FAQs 
• Java Software 
• java.sun.com 
• Sun Microsystems

Object Orientation in Java
Table of Contents
Operator Overloading (Polymorphism in Java)