How can we print line numbers to the log in java

Question

From Angsuman Chakraborty (archived) :

/** Get the current line number.
 * @return int - Current line number.
 */
public static int getLineNumber() {
    return Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getLineNumber();
}

We ended up using a custom class like this for our Android work:

import android.util.Log;    
public class DebugLog {
 public final static boolean DEBUG = true;    
 public static void log(String message) {
  if (DEBUG) {
    String fullClassName = Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getClassName();
    String className = fullClassName.substring(fullClassName.lastIndexOf(".") + 1);
    String methodName = Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getMethodName();
    int lineNumber = Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getLineNumber();

    Log.d(className + "." + methodName + "():" + lineNumber, message);
  }
 }
}

Quick and dirty way:

System.out.println("I'm in line #" + 
    new Exception().getStackTrace()[0].getLineNumber());

With some more details:

StackTraceElement l = new Exception().getStackTrace()[0];
System.out.println(
    l.getClassName()+"/"+l.getMethodName()+":"+l.getLineNumber());

That will output something like this:

com.example.mytest.MyClass/myMethod:103

I am compelled to answer by not answering your question. I'm assuming that you are looking for the line number solely to support debugging. There are better ways. There are hackish ways to get the current line. All I've seen are slow. You are better off using a logging framework like that in java.util.logging package or log4j. Using these packages you can configure your logging information to include context down to the class name. Then each log message would be unique enough to know where it came from. As a result, your code will have a 'logger' variable that you call via

logger.debug("a really descriptive message")

instead of

System.out.println("a really descriptive message")

Log4J allows you to include the line number as part of its output pattern. See http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/apidocs/org/apache/log4j/PatternLayout.html for details on how to do this (the key element in the conversion pattern is "L"). However, the Javadoc does include the following:

WARNING Generating caller location information is extremely slow. It's use should be avoided unless execution speed is not an issue.

The code posted by @simon.buchan will work...

Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getLineNumber()

But if you call it in a method it will always return the line number of the line in the method so rather use the code snippet inline.