Difference between e.printStackTrace and System.out.println(e)

Question

Probably a newbie question, but everyone seems to use e.printStackTrace(), but I have always used System.out.println(e) when exception handling. What i

Answer 1

Since the output of e.printStackTrace(); is System.err and usually I output my app log to a file, I recommend you to use both System.err and System.out to output errors.

public static void log(Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace(); // This goes to System.err
    e.printStackTrace(System.out);
}

This way you can see the errors in the log file (in case you have one) and in the console.