Lesson: A Closer Look at the "Hello World!" Application

Now that you've seen the "Hello World!" application (and perhaps even compiled and run it), you might be wondering how it works. Here again is its code:
class HelloWorldApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
}
}
The "Hello World!" application consists of three primary components: source code comments, the HelloWorldApp class definition, and the main method. The following explanation will provide you with a basic understanding of the code, but the deeper implications will only become apparent after you've finished reading the rest of the tutorial.

Source Code Comments
The following bold text defines the comments of the "Hello World!" application:
/**
* The HelloWorldApp class implements an application that
* simply prints "Hello World!" to standard output.
*/
class HelloWorldApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
}
}
Comments are ignored by the compiler but are useful to other programmers. The Java programming language supports three kinds of comments:
/* text */
The compiler ignores everything from /* to */.
/** documentation */
This indicates a documentation comment (doc comment, for short). The compiler ignores this kind of comment, just like it ignores comments that use /* and */. The javadoc tool uses doc comments when preparing automatically generated documentation. For more information on javadoc, see the JavadocTM tool documentation .
// text
The compiler ignores everything from // to the end of the line.
The HelloWorldApp Class Definition
The following bold text begins the class definition block for the "Hello World!" application:
/**
* The HelloWorldApp class implements an application that
* simply displays "Hello World!" to the standard output.
*/
class HelloWorldApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
}
}
As shown above, the most basic form of a class definition is:
class name {
. . .
}
The keyword class begins the class definition for a class named name, and the code for each class appears between the opening and closing curly braces marked in bold above. Chapter 2 provides an overview of classes in general, and Chapter 4 discusses classes in detail. For now it is enough to know that every application begins with a class definition.