Getting the name of the currently executing method

Question

Is there a way to get the name of the currently executing method in Java?

Answer 1

An alternative method is to create, but not throw, an Exception, and use that object from which to get the stack trace data, since the enclosing method will typically be at index 0 - as long as the JVM stores that information, as others have mentioned above. This not the cheapest method, however.

From Throwable.getStackTrace() (this has been the same since Java 5 at least):

The zeroth element of the array (assuming the array's length is non-zero) represents the top of the stack, which is the last method invocation in the sequence. Typically, this is the point at which this throwable was created and thrown.

The snippet below assumes the class is non-static (because of getClass()), but that's an aside.

System.out.printf("Class %s.%s\n", getClass().getName(), new Exception("is not thrown").getStackTrace()[0].getMethodName());