TextComponent

Both TextArea and TextField are subclasses of java.awt.TextComponent. This class contains methods common to both classes including several you've already seen: getText(), setText(), and setEditable(). The TextComponent class also defines methods for manipulating the selection and the caret and for processing TextEvents.

The selection is used for copy and paste and other purposes. The first character in a TextComponent is character 0; the second is character 1, and so on.

  public int    getSelectionStart()
  public void   setSelectionStart(int selectionStart)
  public int    getSelectionEnd()
  public void   setSelectionEnd(int selectionEnd)
  public void   select(int selectionStart, int selectionEnd)
  public void   selectAll()
  public String getSelectedText()

The caret is the insertion point. It's where text appears when the user types. There are two methods to adjust it:

  public void setCaretPosition(int position)
  public int  getCaretPosition()