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Java's "non-conversion" output method

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• Printing integer to the terminal
  • I like to show students what's going on using programming examples

    What I like to show you is:

    You cannot naively print a binary number to the terminal because it will not be display correctly

    But I cannot show you this fact by using

    System.out.print( 12 );

    because the print( ) function will first convert the number to an ASCII string (i.e.: "12") for your convenience

    In fact, Java has provided many conversion methods within the print( ) methods (plural !!!) by using the overloading feature in the Java language.

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• Overloaded print( ) and println( ) in Java's System.out
  • As you know, Java's methods can be overloaded:

    A Java class can contain multiple (different) methods that has the same method name but with different parameters (= "signature")

    This is the case with:

    System.out.print( ) and System.out.println( )

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  • System.out is PrintStream object ( See this Java doc page: click here)

    If you take a look at the documentation for the PrintStream Java class, you will see the overloaded methods print( ) and println( ):

    void print(boolean b) void print(char c) void print(char[] s) void print(double d) void print(float f) void print(int i) void print(long l) void print(object obj) void print(String s)

    The Java doc for PrintStream is here for easy access: click here

    Therefore:

    Java will invoke a different print( ) (or println( ) method if you pass a different data type to the method

    I can tell you that:

    Each print( ) method contains a conversion algorithm that converts the represetation of the input type to an ASCII string representation before it performs the print operation !!!

    That's why we cannot use print( ) or println( ) to illustrate the need to convert to ASCII representation (because inside the need for conversion is taken care of by print( ) !!!.

    If print( ) did the conversion (secretly) for us, there is no more need for us to do the conversion...)