Printing Class Name

[Olivier Legat]

Hello everyone,

I'm having a problem in printing the class names when inheriting and I'm pretty sure the solution is fairly simple.. To better explain myself, here is a sample code:

class Animal {
    public void type() {System.out.println("Animal");}
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    public void type() {System.out.println("Dog");}
}

class Cat extends Animal {
    public void type() {System.out.println("Cat");}
}

So to write the class names of Dog and Cat I am overriding the method type(). This is incorrect (well at least for what I'm trying to do it's incorrect). I want the classes Dog and Cat to inherit a method that allows them to print their type. How can I do this?

Thanks is advance

[Jelle Klap]

Olivier Legat wrote:Hello everyone,

I'm having a problem in printing the class names when inheriting and I'm pretty sure the solution is fairly simple.. To better explain myself, here is a sample code:

-code-

So to write the class names of Dog and Cat I am overriding the method type(). This is incorrect (well at least for what I'm trying to do it's incorrect). I want the classes Dog and Cat to inherit a method that allows them to print their type. How can I do this?

Thanks is advance

You can use the java.lang.Object#getClass() method to get at an Object's class at runtime.
If you take a look at API of java.lang.Class, I'm sure you can come up with a way to get at the information you're after.

[Balu Sadhasivam]

How about overriding toString() method for each of your classes . I can see you want a retrun String after all .

[Olivier Legat]

Thank you Jelle and Balu, problem solved