Early computers in the 1940s and 1950s were more like gigantic calculators because
they were used primarily for numerical computation. However, as computers have
evolved to possess more computational power, our use of computers is no longer
limited to numerical computation. Today we use computers for processing information
of diverse types. In fact, most application software today such as Web
browsers, word processors, database management systems, presentation software,
and graphics design software is not intended specifically for number crunching.
These programs still perform numerical computation, but their primary data are
text, graphics, video, and other nonnumerical data. We have already seen examples
of nonnumerical data processing. We introduced the String class and string processing
in Chapter 2. A nonnumerical data type called boolean was used in Chapters 5
and 6. In this chapter, we will delve more deeply into the String class and present
advanced string processing. We will also introduce the char data type for representing
a single character and the StringBuffer class for an efficient operation on a
certain type of string processing.
