Java™ How to Program, Seventh 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 method of the referenced object—such as the method call in line 10 of Fig. 6.4, maximumFinder.determineMaximum(), which calls a method of class MaximumFinder from the main method of MaximumFinderTest.

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.

Note that a static method can call only other static methods of the same class directly (i.e., using the method ...