Determine a string from main class in an outside class

Question

Hello there,
This might be stupid question but I cant think, I am so very tired. Okay here is the question, is there any way we could see or the get the value of a string(just a string which is set in main class'A', its already set, we cannot make it static r anything like that)in a method outside that main class, probably in a method 'x' in class'C'.
Thanks
potti

Answer 1

Yes, you can, in many ways, or else Java would be moot. Excluding the static way of doing it, which by the way is evil, your class C can make an instance of class A and then access it either as a public field or as the value returned by a public method. You can also use inheritance, but it's pointless in this case, inheritance is meant to abstract, extend functionality, and prevent having to rewrite code. It's not meant for accessing fields. And by the way, inheritance, too, is evil.
This is one way to do it.
class A {
     public String s = "great balls of fire";
public class C {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          A myInstance = new A();
          String s = myInstance.s;
          System.out.println(s);
}This is the preferred way to do it, as it encapsulates the String. The idea of encapsulation is to access fields by a method instead of directly since interfaces are less likely to change than an object's data and in the case that the object's data does change and the interface does not, the changes will remain local.
class A {
     private String s = "great balls of fire";
     public String getS() { return s; }
public class C {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          A a = new A();
          String s = a.getS();
          System.out.println(s);
}