Textbook information

If you did not buy the textbook from the UVa bookstore (the book has a purple stripe at the top), then you MUST read through this page, as it may affect your course grade.

There are three versions of the textbook floating around.  The difference is which version of Java they use; they also have slightly different titles.

Java version 1.5 is also called Java version 5.0 -- it's (essentially) the same version, but with two different version numbers.  Because of the confusion with the version numbers, this web page will refer to the books as the 1.4 version, the silver version, and the purple version, respectively.

In previous semesters, the textbook came shrink-wrapped with a CodeLab license (aka a TuringsCraft license) -- we are not using that version of the textbook this semester.

You are welcome to use the silver version of the textbook (it's a lot cheaper); however, we do not recommend you use the 1.4 version of the textbook.  A number of online places (such as Amazon) sell one version with the wrong picture (the silver version has the picture of the 1.4 version).  Note that the titles of the three versions are all different -- specifically, which number (if any) is after the word 'Java' in the title.  So buy it based on the title.

The official textbook for this course is the full 5.0 version (the right-most one shown above) with the purple stripe at the top.

Consider buying the textbook from the place that will save you the most amount of money (we don't endorse the vendors listed below -- they are just for your convenience).  If you know of any more places where it is cheaper, please .  However, be careful about buying it from online vendors!  Many of them will sell the wrong version for very little money.  Buy it based on the title -- if there is a '5.0' in the title, it's the right book.

• Amazon has the purple version for $85.50
• eCampus has the purple version for $94.30

Differences between 'silver' version and the 'purple' version

The big difference between the pre-1.5 version of the textbook and the regular 1.5 version has to do with the creation of a Scanner object (we will be going over Scanner objects in the beginning of the course).  The pre-1.5 version has:

Scanner stdin = Scanner.create (System.in);

This will not work in the regular 1.5 version of Java.  Instead, you need to use:

Scanner stdin = new Scanner (System.in);

Note that the bolded part is the part that has changed.  Don't worry if you don't understand what this means yet - we will be going over it in more detail in the course.  You must use the new Scanner version of the code throughout this course; not doing so will cause a big deduction of points from your homework/exam/lab.  No exceptions!  Note that there is also differences between how iterators work, but we won't be getting to iterators in this course.

Differences between the 1.4 version and the purple version

There are many differences between Java version 1.4 and version 1.5 (aka version 5.0).  Therefore, we do not recommend you use this version of the textbook.