Thread: An array from abstract parent?

Please help me clarify an unclear point in my textbook.

The text says an object cannot be constructed from an abstract parent. But seemingly contradicting this, the example program shows an abstract parent with a constructor, and it also shows an array that was instantiated from that abstract parent class. I thought an array was an object. So if an object cannot be constructed there...

What am I missing? Is an array an exception to this rule (that an object cannot be constructed in an abstract parent class?

Do I need to show the code, or is the above explanation enough?

First up is the code from the driver creating an array from the abstract parent class. Below that is the abstract parent class' heading and constructor.

 
public class Payroll
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Employee[] employees = new Employee[100];
    }

Then the parent abstract class (fragment):

 
public abstract class Employee
{
    public abstract double getPay();
    private String name;
 
    //***********************************
 
    public Employee(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
    }
 
    ..................
 
} end class Employee

Please let me know if you need to see more code than I've included here.

Here's a quote from the textbook in question. It might shed some light on my problem.

"Adding an abstract modifier to a class heading makes it impossible to instantiate an object from that class. If a program attempts to instantiate an abstract class, the compiler generates an error. For example, since Employee (my code example above) is an abstract class, we'd get a compilation error if we had a main method like this:

 
public static void main(String[] args)
{
    Employee emp = new Employee("Bob");
}

I hope that helps. The above shows that an object cannot be created in an abstract class. But my previous code sample above shows that this textbook created an array in that same abstract class. That seems contradictory. What's up with that?

Yes, that helps, Zaphod_b. Thank you. This book, although impressive in general, has been known to be ambiguous from time to time. Here again they have dangled a participle or two and let me wander away from their point. Regardless of your explanation, which I understand, they still seem be using an array of instantiated objects from an abstract class. So I suppose I MUST have misread something somewhere. I'll go back and re-read a fourth time.

I've got it now! (he says with an echo to an empty auditorium)

Just as Zaphod_b said (above), the creation of the array was NOT an illegal instantiation of an object in the abstract class Employee - as much as it looks that way, it's not. I was misled by the existence of a constructor. It's in an abstract class (Employee) and it's illegal for an object to be instantiated in an abstract class. So the constructor, along with the array-creation statement, seemed contradictory to the claim that an object cannot be instantiated there.

In the end, the array was created to hold references to objects instantiated in other classes, descendant classes, for the sake of illustrating polymorphism and the subsequent use of abstract classes and methods.

If this were not my own post, I would surely be asleep by now.

Thanks again for your in-depth explanation, Zaphod_b! And thank you to all the empty seats out there, for listening.