How Java Differs From C And C++

Although Java was modeled after C and C++ languages, it differs from C and C++ in many ways. Java does not i a number of features available in C and C++. For the benefit  of C and C++ programmers, we point out here a few major differences between C/C++ and Java language

How Java Differs From C:

Java and C

Java is not lot like C but the major difference between Java and C is that Java is and object-oriented language and has mechanism to define classes and objects. In an effort to build a simple and safe language, the Java team did not include some of the C features in Java.

• Java does not include the C unique statement keywords sizeof, and typedef.
• Java does not contain the data type struct and union.
• Java does not define the type modifiers keywords auto,extern,register,signed, and unsigned.
• Java does not support an explicit pointer type.
• Java does not have a preprocessor and therefore we cannot use # define, # include, and # ifdefstatements.
• Java requires that the functions with no arguments must be declared with empty parenthesis and not with the void keyword as done in C.
• Java adds new operators such as instanceof and >>>.
• Java adds labelled break and continue statements.
• Java adds many features required for object-oriented programming.

How Java Differs From C++ :

Java and C++

Java is a true object-oriented language while C++ is basically C with object-oriented extension. That is what exactly the increment operator ++ indicates. C++ has maintained backward compatibility with C. Is is therefore possible to write an old style C program and run it successfully under C++. Java appears to be similar to C++ when we consider only the “extensions” part of C++. However, some object -oriented features of C++ make the C++ code extremely difficult to follow and maintain.

Listed below are some major C++ features that were intentionally omitted from java or significantly modified.

• Java does not support operator overloading.
• Java does not have template classes as in C++.
• Java does not support multiple inheritance of classes. This is accomplished using a new feature called “Interface”.
• Java does not support global variables. Every variable and method is declared within classes and forms part of that class.
• Java does not use pointers.
• Java has replaced the destructor function with a finalize() function.
• There are no header  files in Java.

Java also adds some new features. While C++ is a superset of C, Java is neither a superset nor a subset of C or C++. Java may be considered as a first cousin of C++ and a second cousin of C