I'm new to programming and I just started learning Java. I'm curious that does the object System.out belong to class System or class PrintStream?
I referred to a textbook, JAVA CONCEPTS 4/e. The textbook states that to use the out object in the System class, you must refer it as System.out
but later in the book it states that the System.out
belongs to class PrintStream.
I've searched google and stackoverflow but all the answers are too hard for me to understand.
The out is an instance of the System class and is of type PrintStream. Its access specifiers are public and final. It is an instance of java. io.
Out is a static field inside System class. The type of out is PrintStream .
Create a PrintStreamOnce we import the package here is how we can create the print stream. // Creates a FileOutputStream FileOutputStream file = new FileOutputStream(String file); // Creates a PrintStream PrintStream output = new PrintStream(file, autoFlush);
Can't we just create an object of PrintStream class and call the println() method as PrintStream class can be instantiated. In that case the default implementation is gone. You have to, say for example, create a file, then pass it... You can try some code to check what all you can do!
"out" belongs to class "System" and is of type "PrintStream" :)
It depends what you mean by "belongs to".
Usually, people would say out
"belongs" to System
because it is a static field declared in that class. Note, though, that this concept of belonging is only a weak one, basically implying only a namespace ownership. There is no special relation between a class and its static fields.
You may also say the object referred to by the out
variable belongs to the PrintStream
class because it is an instance of that class (or a subclass), just as "beagle" belongs to the "dog" class. This is not standard usage in Java parlance, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of type theory, where a type is really a set of values, and the value of out
"belongs" to that the type / set defined by the PrintStream
class.
System.out
is a PrintStream
object. It is defined in System
(so, it is member of System
) class as :
static PrintStream out
See: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/System.html
It is defined as:
static PrintStream out
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