Thursday, April 21, 2011

Java Interview Questions Part 2

1. Difference between Vector and ArrayList?
Vector is synchronized whereas arraylist is not.

2. Difference between Swing and Awt?
AWT are heavy-weight componenets. Swings are light-weight components. Hence swing works faster than AWT.

3. What is the difference between a constructor and a method?
A constructor is a member function of a class that is used to create objects of that class. It has the same name as the class itself, has no return type, and is invoked using the new operator. A method is an ordinary member function of a class. It has its own name, a return type (which may be
void), and is invoked using the dot operator.

4. What is an Iterator?
Some of the collection classes provide traversal of their contents via a java.util.Iterator interface. This interface allows you to walk through a collection of objects, operating on each object in turn. Remember when using Iterators that they contain a snapshot of the collection at the time the Iterator was obtained; generally it is not advisable to modify the collection itself while traversing an Iterator.

5. State the significance of public, private, protected, default modifiers both singly and in combination and state the effect of package relationships on declared items qualified by these modifiers.
public: Public class is visible in other packages, field is visible everywhere (class must be public too)
private: Private variables or methods may be used only by an instance of the same class that declares the variable or method, A private feature may only be accessed by the class that owns the feature.
protected: Is available to all classes in the same package and also available to all subclasses of the class that owns the protected feature.This access is provided even to subclasses that reside in a different package from the class that owns the protected feature.
default: What you get by default ie, without any access modifier (ie, public private or protected).It means that it is visible to all within a particular package.

6. What is an abstract class?
Abstract class must be extended/subclassed (to be useful). It serves as a template. A class that is abstract may not be instantiated (ie, you may not call its constructor), abstract class may contain static data. Any class with an abstract method is automatically abstract itself, and must be declared as such. A class may be declared abstract even if it has no abstract methods. This prevents it from being instantiated.

7. What is static in java?
Static means one per class, not one for each object no matter how many instance of a class might exist. This means that you can use them without creating an instance of a class. Static methods are implicitly final, because overriding is done based on the type of the object, and static methods are attached to a class, not an object. A static method in a superclass can be shadowed by another static method in a subclass, as long as the original method was not declared final. However, you can't override a static method with a nonstatic method. In other words, you can't change a static method into an instance method in a subclass.

Java Interview Questions Part 1

1. What is the difference between an Interface and an Abstract class?
An abstract class can have instance methods that implement a default behavior. An Interface can only declare constants and instance methods, but cannot implement default behavior and all methods are implicitly abstract. An interface has all public members and no implementation. An abstract class is a class which may have the usual flavors of class members (private, protected, etc.), but has some abstract methods.

2. What is the purpose of garbage collection in Java, and when is it used?
The purpose of garbage collection is to identify and discard objects that are no longer needed by a program so that their resources can be reclaimed and reused. A Java object is subject to garbage collection when it becomes unreachable to the program in which it is used.

3. Describe synchronization in respect to multithreading.
With respect to multithreading, synchronization is the capability to control the access of multiple threads to shared resources. Without synchonization, it is possible for one thread to modify a shared variable while another thread is in the process of using or updating same shared variable. This usually leads to significant errors.

4. Explain different way of using thread?
The thread could be implemented by using runnable interface or by inheriting from the Thread class. The former is more advantageous, 'cause when you are going for multiple inheritance..the only interface can help.

5. What are pass by reference and passby value?
Pass By Reference means the passing the address itself rather than passing the value. Passby Value means passing a copy of the value to be passed.

6. What is HashMap and Map?
Map is Interface and Hashmap is class that implements that.

7. Difference between HashMap and HashTable?
The HashMap class is roughly equivalent to Hashtable, except that it is unsynchronized and permits nulls. (HashMap allows null values as key and value whereas Hashtable doesnt allow). HashMap does not guarantee that the order of the map will remain constant over time. HashMap is unsynchronized
and Hashtable is synchronized.

Friday, April 15, 2011

UNIX Commands Interview Questions Part 4


1. How to switch to a super user status to gain privileges?
Use 'su' command. The system asks for password and when valid entry is made the user gains super user (admin) privileges.

2. What are shell variables?
Shell variables are special variables, a name-value pair created and maintained by the shell.
Example: PATH, HOME, MAIL and TERM

3. What is redirection?
Directing the flow of data to the file or from the file for input or output.
Example : ls > wc

4. How to terminate a process which is running and the specialty on command kill 0?
With the help of kill command we can terminate the process.
Syntax: kill pid
Kill 0 - kills all processes in your system except the login shell.

5. What is a pipe and give an example?
A pipe is two or more commands separated by pipe char '|'. That tells the shell to arrange for the output of the preceding command to be passed as input to the following command.
Example : ls -l | pr
The output for a command ls is the standard input of pr.
When a sequence of commands are combined using pipe, then it is called pipeline.

6. Explain kill() and its possible return values.
There are four possible results from this call:
'kill()' returns 0. This implies that a process exists with the given PID, and the system would allow you to send signals to it. It is system-dependent whether the process could be a zombie.
'kill()' returns -1, 'errno == ESRCH' either no process exists with the given PID, or security enhancements are causing the system to deny its existence. (On some systems, the process could be a zombie.)
'kill()' returns -1, 'errno == EPERM' the system would not allow you to kill the specified process. This means that either the process exists (again, it could be a zombie) or draconian security enhancements are present
(e.g. your process is not allowed to send signals to *anybody*).
'kill()' returns -1, with some other value of 'errno' you are in trouble! The most-used technique is to assume that success or failure with 'EPERM' implies that the process exists, and any other error implies that it doesn't.
An alternative exists, if you are writing specifically for a system (or all those systems) that provide a '/proc'
filesystem: checking for the existence of '/proc/PID' may work.

7. What is relative path and absolute path.
Absolute path: Exact path from root directory.
Relative path: Relative to the current path.