Code Conventions for the Java™ Programming Language

Copyright © 1995-1999, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Revised April 20, 1999. Format and navigation by Martin Rinehart, www.MartinRinehart.com, May 31, 2005.

1 Introduction

1.1 Why Have Code Conventions

1.2 Acknowledgments

2 File Names

2.1 File Suffixes

2.2 Common File Names

3 File Organization

3.1 Java Source Files

3.1.1 Beginning Comments

3.1.2 Package and Import Statements

3.1.3 Class and Interface Declarations

4 Indentation

4.1 Line Length

4.2 Wrapping Lines

5 Comments

5.1 Implementation Comment Formats

5.1.1 Block Comments

5.1.2 Single-Line Comments

5.1.3 Trailing Comments

5.1.4 End-Of-Line Comments

5.2 Documentation Comments

6 Declarations

6.1 Number Per Line

6.2 Initialization

6.3 Placement

6.4 Class and Interface Declarations

7 Statements

7.1 Simple Statements

7.2 Compound Statements

7.3 return Statements

7.4 if, if-else, if else-if else Statements

7.5 for Statements

7.6 while Statements

7.7 do-while Statements

7.8 switch Statements

7.9 try-catch Statements

8 White Space

8.1 Blank Lines

8.2 Blank Spaces

9 Naming Conventions

Sub-topics added by Martin Rinehart for ease of navigation.

9.1 Packages

9.2 Classes

9.3 Interfaces

9.4 Methods

9.5 Variables

9.6 Constants

10 Programming Practices

10.1 Providing Access to Instance and Class Variables

10.2 Referring to Class Variables and Methods

10.3 Constants

10.4 Variable Assignments

10.5 Miscellaneous Practices

10.5.1 Parentheses

10.5.2 Returning Values

10.5.3 Expressions before `?' in the Conditional Operator

10.5.4 Special Comments

11 Code Examples

11.1 Java Source File Example