The Java Tutorials have been written for JDK 8. Examples and practices described in this page don't take advantage of improvements introduced in later releases and might use technology no longer available.
See Dev.java for updated tutorials taking advantage of the latest releases.
See Java Language Changes for a summary of updated language features in Java SE 9 and subsequent releases.
See JDK Release Notes for information about new features, enhancements, and removed or deprecated options for all JDK releases.
Lesson: Language Basics
You've already learned that objects store their state in fields. However, the Java
programming language also uses the term "variable" as well. This section discusses
this relationship, plus variable naming rules and conventions,
basic data types (primitive types, character strings, and arrays), default values, and literals.
This section describes the operators of the Java programming language. It presents the most
commonly-used operators first, and the less commonly-used operators last. Each discussion
includes code samples that you can compile and run.
Operators may be used in building expressions, which compute values; expressions are the core components of statements; statements may be grouped into blocks.
This section discusses expressions, statements, and blocks using example code that you've already
seen.
This section describes the control flow statements supported by the Java programming language.
It covers the decisions-making, looping, and branching statements that enable your programs to conditionally
execute particular blocks of code.