Question

Consider the following Bugs class, which is intended to simulate variations in a population of bugs. The population is stored in the method's int attribute. The getPopulation method is intended to allow methods in other classes to access a Bugs object's population value; however, it does not work as intended.

public class Bugs
{
private int population;
public Bugs(int p)
{
population = p;
}
public int getPopulation()
{
return p;
}
}
Which of the following best explains why the getPopulation method does NOT work as intended?
a. The getPopulation method should have at least one parameter
b. The variable population is not declared inside the getPopulation method
c. The instance variable population should be returned instead of p, which is local to the constructor.
d. The getPopulation method should be declared as private.
e. The return type of the getPopulation method should be void

Answer 1

The getPopulation method does not work as intended because it returns the local variable p instead of the instance variable population. The correct answer is C.

Step-by-step explanation:

The correct answer is c. The instance variable population should be returned instead of p, which is local to the constructor. In the Bugs class, the getPopulation method is intended to return the value of the population instance variable. However, the current implementation returns the local variable p, which is only defined within the constructor and not accessible outside of it. To fix this, the method should be modified to return population instead of p.

The getPopulation method should return the instance variable population, not p, which is local to the constructor.

The getPopulation method in the Bugs class does not work as intended because the local variable p, which is used inside the constructor, is mistakenly being referenced. Instead, the method should return the instance variable population that was initialized in the constructor and holds the value of the population size.

The correct choice and explanation is: c. The instance variable population should be returned instead of p, which is local to the constructor. This is because the variable p was only scoped to the constructor, whereas the population variable is an instance variable that actually holds the population value for the object.

The getPopulation method in the Bugs class does not work as intended due to option c. The issue lies in the return statement within the getPopulation method. Instead of returning the instance variable population, the method erroneously attempts to return a variable named 'p,' which is local to the constructor. This local variable 'p' was used as a parameter in the constructor to initialize the instance variable population.

To rectify this, the getPopulation method should correctly return the instance variable population. This ensures that the intended population value stored in the Bugs object is accessible when other classes invoke the getPopulation method. The corrected code for the getPopulation method should look like this:

Option C, stating that the variable population is not declared inside the getPopulation method, is not accurate because the variable is declared as an instance variable for the class, making it accessible throughout the class methods. The correct fix is to return the instance variable within the getPopulation method, addressing the error and allowing the method to work as intended.