Comprehensive coverage of Ruby 1.8 and 1.9
"The New Most Important Ruby Book"
Peter Cooper,
rubyinside.com
Completely updated for Ajax and Web 2.0
"A must-have reference"
Brendan Eich,
creator of JavaScript
Jude
Jude is my Java documentation browser. It combines Sun's definitive javadocs with the easy-to-use format of Java in a Nutshell, and tops it off with easy keyboard-based navigation and full-text searching.
Jude is available for free evaluation.
See the user's guide for more info
Java in a Nutshell
The 5th edition is now out, with complete coverage of Java 5.0!
It includes a fast-paced tutorial on the language, and a compact quick-reference for the core Java API.
Java Examples in a Nutshell
The 3rd edition, updated for Java 1.4
This edition has all-new coverage of the NIO and JavaSound APIs, completely rewritten Servlets and XML chapters, and coverage of new Java 1.4 features (assertions, logging, preferences, SSL, etc.) added througout. A great book for those who like to learn by example. 193 working examples: 21,900 lines of carefully commented code to learn from.
Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook
Amazon incorrectly credits me as the main author on this book. I'm actually the second author: really more of a consultant. This is a good book about all the language changes in the latest version of Java.
Effective Java
I didn't write this excellent book, but I wish I had.
Author Josh Bloch is probably best known for the collections classes in the java.util package. His experience and wisdom are apparent in this book. I learned from it and recommend it highly.
July 12, 2004
More Fun with Bits
The method below multiplies a float by 2 by manipulating its bits to increment the exponent.
See the javadoc for Float.intBitsToFloat() for details on the IEEE754 floating-point representation. Unlike the previous blog entry, the methods used here have been around a long time.
static float multiplyByTwo(float x) {
// View the float as 32 bits
int bits = Float.floatToIntBits(x);
// Extract the bits that represent the exponent
int exponent = (bits >> 23) & 0xFF;
// clear the exponent bits
bits &= ~(0xFF << 23);
// Increment the exponent and set this new value
bits |= ((exponent+1) & 0xFF) << 23;
// Return the bits as a float
return Float.intBitsToFloat(bits);
}
Bit Tricks
Java 1.5 defines new bit-manipulation methods on Integer and Long. These are one of the minor changes attributable to Josh Bloch. Here's some code to play around with them.
static void bitTricks(int x) {
// Approximate log2() with numberOfLeadingZeros()
if (x > 0)
System.out.printf("base-2 log of %d is between %d and %d%n", x,
Integer.SIZE-1-Integer.numberOfLeadingZeros(x),
Integer.SIZE-Integer.numberOfLeadingZeros(x-1));
// If 1 bits in an int are used to represent members of a set, then
// bitCount() and highestOneBit() allow efficient counting and
// iteration of the members of the set
System.out.printf("%d has %d bits set.%n", x, Integer.bitCount(x));
System.out.print(x + " = ");
while(x != 0) {
int highbit = Integer.highestOneBit(x); // Get the highest bit
System.out.print(highbit + "+"); // Print it out
x &= ~highbit; // Clear it
}
System.out.println("0");
}
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