Javadoc

Javadoc (originally cased JavaDoc) is a documentation generator created by Sun Microsystems for the Java language (now owned by Oracle Corporation) for generating API documentation in HTML format from Java source code. The HTML format is used for adding the convenience of being able to hyperlink related documents together.

The "doc comments" format used by Javadoc is the de facto industry standard for documenting Java classes. Some IDEs, like Netbeans and Eclipse, automatically generate Javadoc HTML. Many file editors assist the user in producing Javadoc source and use the Javadoc info as internal references for the programmer.

Javadoc also provides an API for creating doclets and taglets, which allows users to analyze the structure of a Java application. This is how JDiff can generate reports of what changed between two versions of an API.

Javadoc was an early Java language documentation generator. Prior to the use of documentation generators it was customary to use technical writers who would typically write only standalone documentation for the software, but it was much harder to keep this documentation in sync with the software itself.

Javadoc has been used by Java since the first release, and is usually updated upon every new release of the Java Development Kit.

A Javadoc comment is set off from code by standard multi-line comment tags /* and */. The opening tag (called begin-comment delimiter), has an extra asterisk, as in /**.

The basic structure of writing document comments is to embed them inside /** ... */. The Javadoc is written next to the items without any separating newline. Note that any import statements must precede the class declaration. The class declaration usually contains:

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