printing in the same line in java

Question

I have a base class called Items and 3 derived classes, and within the Items base class i have a print function of the form

public void print(){
        Syst         


        

Answer 1

You can't safely retract a newline after it's been printed (outputting a backspace character works depending on the terminal, but you really don't want to do that). I think probably the logical way to architect this is have one superclass function:

public void print() {
    System.out.println(toString());
}

And then override toString as needed:

Superclass

public String toString() {
    return "ID " + id + " Title " + title + " <" + year + "> ";
}

Subclass

public String toString() {
    return super.toString() + " ... more stuff";
}

Answer 2

Do not do println on the base class use print instead

Answer 3

It looks like overriding toString() is more appropriate, here. You can then control the printing where it's needed, and it can go to System.out, or a file, or a logger, and everything else.

@Override public String toString() {
   return String.format("ID %s Title %s <%d> ", id, title, year);
}

Then in the child classes:

@Override public String toString() {
   return super.toString() + " whatever";
}

API links

• Object.toString()

Related questions

• toString() in Java
• Is toString() only useful for debugging?
• when to use toString() method

Answer 4

replace println with System.out.print