The string is 15 characters long

Invoking an Object's Method

Remember that an object consists of both variables (state information) and methods (recipies for behavior.) Both of these are called "members" of the object. Java uses "dot notation" for both:

referenceToAnObject.memberOfObject

For example, to invoke the length() method of the object named str1 the following is used:

                                                          
len  = str1.length();  

Method names have "()" at their end. Often there is additional information inside the "()", but they are required even if they contain nothing. The above method evaluates to an integer, 15, which is assigned to the int variable len.