Creating the reciprocal method

Overview

Description

  1. Starting Eclipse
  2. Creating the Lab3 and Fraction Classes
  3. Creating Instance Variables, a Constructor, Accessors, and Mutators
  4. Creating the toString Method
  5. Creating the decimalValue Method
  6. Creating the reciprocal Method
  7. Creating the multiply Method
  8. Creating the divide Method
  9. Creating the equals Method
  10. Generating Javadoc

Eclipse Tip of the Week

Another operation that may be useful for our Fraction class is calculating the reciprocal. Instead of altering a Fraction object and changing it into its reciprocal, we will return a new Fraction object.

Make note of the use of accessors rather than directly referring to the instance variables. This is a good programming practice. Note that when taking the reciprocal we are not modifying the current object's numerator and denominator. Rather we are creating a new fraction that will be the reciprocal of the current fraction. After the invocation of reciprocal method, the fraction class on which the method was invoked remains the same. 

/**
 * Returns the reciprocal of this Fraction
 * @return A Fraction that is the reciprocal of this Fraction
 */
public Fraction reciprocal()
{
	return new Fraction( getDenominator(), getNumerator() );	
}

Testing

  1. Un-comment the code in main that prints the reciprocals of the two fractions.
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