This came to my attention on page 274:

            Animal[] animalArray = new Animal[2];
            Cow myCow1 = new Cow("Deirdre");
            animalArray[0] = myCow1;
            animalArray[1] = new Chicken("Ken");

My question is why do you need to prefix myCow1 with Cow, but you do not need to prefix animalArray[1] with Chicken.

In this line: Cow myCow1 = new Cow("Deirdre");

The first Cow is the type (like int, string, etc.), and the second Cow() is the constructor, correct?

So why does the Chicken not need the type declaration?

Hi Dynamik,
You do not need to prefix Animal[1] with Chicken since Chicken is an object derived from the Animal abstract class. This is a very powerful feature that allows you to populate arrays with objects without necessarily knowing their type in advance. Both Cow and Chicken are derived from the Animal abstract class. The Animal[] array can only hold Animal objects or objects derived from them.

Both ways of adding an Animal derived object into an Animal array are valid (yet result in slightly different results).

The example is showing that there are two ways to do that.

1. Adding an already instantiated object (or instantiating the object first, then adding it to the array). This was the case of Cow myCow1 = new Cow("Deirdre"); This statment instantiated a Cow object with the myCow1 as a reference to it.

2. The second method instantiates the Chicken object and adds it to the array in one step " animalArray[1] = new Chicken("Ken"); ". The cost of saving the separate instantiation step is that you do not get a reference to the chicken object (such as myChicken1 for example).


I hope this helps.

Regards,
Madkour