What's the "dot" for when registering an Activity

Question

I'm kind of a noob at programming for the Android OS. I noticed in the books I have been reading that the authors have placed a "dot" in front of the activity name when registering their activities in the manifest. I've looked around the Android developer site and I can't figure out why we need the "dot". Does the "dot" actually server a purpose? Do I need it? I have included an example below. Notice the "dot" before "NewActivity":

<activity android:name=".NewActivity"></activity> 

Answer 1

As you have noticed the point is not necessary but it basically means: the activity class lives in the same package of the app. So, if your app package is: com.my.package then:

• .YourActivity means that your class is inside com.my.package.
• YourActivity means that your class is inside com.my.package (same as above).
• .activities.YourActivity means that your class is inside com.my.package.activitites.
• You can even do something like: com.my.package.activities.YourActivity which is useful when you want to have different versions of your app and use Ant to change the references to the package automatically.