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Android Build a Blog Reader Android App Getting Data from the Web Trying Code and Catching Exceptions

Can we always reuse type names and variable names?

Most languages won't allow the declaration of URL as a string when URL is already a data type.

1 Answer

Harry James
Harry James
14,780 Points

Hey again Michael! :)

In Java, you need to specifically declare what the variable's data type is. Some languages will already decide that a URL is in fact a URL (I know, that sounds silly but it's true) whereas Java has no idea what it is unless you tell specifically tell it.

So, in Java, we are free to do what we want, we can declare a URL like a string (As long as we use quotes). Note that the two sides must always be balanced though. So, we can do:

Uri myUri = Uri.parse("http://www.google.com/");

but we can't do

Uri myUri = "http://www.google.com/";
// Unbalanced!

because Java is expecting a Uri but instead gets a String (I'm using Uri's here instead of URL's because they are more convenient to use in Android thanks to the parse method.).

Hope this clarifies things and, if you have any more questions, give me a shout! :)

Thank you Harry. I think I understand.