toString Clarification

[Mitch Krah]

Can someone provide clarification of the toString method and overriding it in classes to print "meaningful" information? I have been asked to implement the toString method in classes but can only find a paragraph on this method in 2 different books. Any additional/practicle information would be appreciated.

Thank you,
M

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Mitch,
By default the toString() method outputs a hash representing the memory address. Often, we overwrite this to contain useful information about the state of the object (such as the values of it's fields.) As an example,

public String toString() {
return firstName + " " + lastName;
}

[Mitch Krah]

Thank you.

And then, how do you call the toString from another class?

M

[Mike Gershman]

either
System.out.println( myObject );
or
System.out.println( myObject.toString() );

It makes no never mind.

[David Harkness]

Appending an object reference to a String using the + operator will call toStrnig() on the reference (or append "null" if it's null) for you.