Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

6.5 Notes on Declaring and Using Methods

There are three ways to call a method:

1. Using a method name by itself to call another method of the same class—such as maximum(number1, number2, number3) in line 21 of Fig. 6.3.

2. Using a variable that contains a reference to an object, followed by a dot (.) and the method name to call a non-static method of the referenced object—such as the method call in line 16 of Fig. 3.2, myAccount.getName(), which calls a method of class Account from the main method of AccountTest. Non-static methods are typically called instance methods.

3. Using the class name and a dot (.) to call a static method of a class—such as Math.sqrt(900.0) in Section 6.3.

A static method can call other static methods of the same class ...