The story of toString () starting with passing an array to System.out.println

I wanted to make an array and display its contents,

Convert the array to println as it is


int[] array = {1,2,3,4,5};
System.out.println(array);

It seems that there are some beginners who pass the array as an argument to the standard output as it is. This output result (example) is

[I@1540e19d

It becomes something that you don't understand. When I see this, I get asked "It doesn't work" ... Why is this happening?

What is System.out.println?

System → java.lang.System class out → Static variable of PrintStream type of System class That is, println is a ** PrintStream class method **. So if you take a look at PrintStream # println, there are some overloads. Most of them are overloads to support various primitive types, so to mention the others,

println(char[] x) println(Object x) println(String x)

These exist. These, including primitive types, output a string of arguments. In the case of char [], the characters of each element are connected and output, and String also outputs the contents as it is.

In the case of Object, the string ** that is the result of passing the ** argument to String.valueOf is output.

String.valueOf(Object)

Returns a string representation of the Object argument. Parameters: obj - Object。 Return value: A string equal to "null" if the argument is null. Otherwise, the value of obj.toString () is returned.

The reason why it is not set to toString () as it is is because it is null safe. So what about that toString ()?

Object#toString

Returns a string representation of the object. In general, the toString method returns a string that "textually represents" this object. This result should be concise and informative for human readability. Oracle recommends that you override this method in all subclasses. The toString method of class Object returns a string consisting of the name of the original class in which the object is an instance, the atmark character "@", and an unsigned hexadecimal representation of the object's hash code. That is, this method returns a string equal to the following values:

getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())

Return value: A string representation of this object.

It has become. Let's take a look at the first output here.

[I@1540e19d

Do you understand? The string after this @ is the result of ʻInteger.toHexString (hashCode ()) `, that is, ** hexadecimal notation of hash code **. However, this number is meaningless to humans.

As the method description says, "This result should be concise and informative for humans to read. It is recommended that all subclasses override this method." This is the original usage of the method. In the base class Object, it is only decided that "if it is called for the time being, it will be output like this", and ** there is no information about what the contents are **.

String before @-what class of object?

If there is only one useful piece of information, it is the string ** before ** @. In this example, it's [I. What is this ...? If you think so, read the explanation again. The string before the @, which is the result of getClass (). GetName (). So what kind of specifications do you have?

It is difficult to explain or understand the return type Class of getClass () in detail, so for the time being, I would like you to recognize it as "an object that represents an instance of which class".

Class#getName

Returns the name of the entity (class, interface, array class, primitive type, or void) represented by this Class object as a String. If this class object represents a non-array type reference type, as specified in the Java (tm) Language Specification, then the binary name of the class is returned.

If this class object represents a primitive type or void, the returned name is a String equivalent to the Java language keyword corresponding to the primitive type or void.

When this class object represents a class of an array, the internal form of the name consists of one or more [characters, the name of the element type, which represents the nesting depth of the array. The encoding of the element type name is as follows:

Element type encoding boolean type Z byte B char C class or interface Lclassname; double D float F int I long J short S The class name of the class name or interface name is specified by the binary name of the class as in the example above.

Example

String.class.getName() returns "java.lang.String" byte.class.getName() returns "byte" (new Object[3]).getClass().getName() returns "[Ljava.lang.Object;" (new int[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]).getClass().getName() returns "[[[[[[[I"

Simply put, it is a string that represents the type of the instance. Please pay attention to the case of array. The format is such that [ is lined up by the number of dimensions of the array, followed by the class name (L is inserted if it is not a primitive). In the last case of the example, since the array is 7-dimensional, 7 [ are lined up, followed by I indicating that it is an int array. In other words, [I was expressing that this object is a one-dimensional int array.

As mentioned above, the first seemingly incomprehensible output was output according to the specifications. Don't assume that it's a bug just because it's a string that doesn't make sense, but let's investigate the original behavior. By the way, if you want to output the contents of the array properly, pass it to Arrays.toString () (Arrays.deepToString () for a multidimensional array) to make it a string, or output it using a loop.

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