Links: Volcanoes

Introducing Java 5
The last major release of the Java platform was 1.2. It was so major, in fact, that the language came to be known as Java 2. Later Java releases added a number of new features and fixes, but nothing to get overly excited about. Java 5 (JDK 1.5), however, is another biggie! Autoboxing Autoboxing is a language feature that makes the programmer's life much easier when it comes to working with the primitive wrapper types. Consider this code fragment: int num = 23; Integer numObject = new Integer(num); Primitive wrapper objects, such as the Integer class used here, were Java's way of allowing you to treat primitive types as though they were objects. Consequently, you were expected to 'wrap' your primitive type with the corresponding primitive wrapper object, as shown above. Forget all that! Java 5 allows you to do the following: int num = 23; Integer numObject = num;