non-static method toString() cannot be referenced from a static context

Question

Don\'t want any code, just want some sort of guidance. Would like to keep my academic integrity in tact ;)

I keep getting that annoying error. I need to call the toS

Answer 1

Look at the following code, you can compile toString with a static variable without a new object, it just throw exception at run time

demo>cat Test.java 
class Water {
  public String toString() {return "whatever";}
}

public class Test { 
  static Water water;
  public static void main(String...args) {
    System.out.println(water.toString());
  }
}

demo>javac Test.java 
demo>java Test
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at Test.main(Test.java:8)