How to print out all the elements of a List in Java?

Question

The following is compact and avoids the loop in your example code (and gives you nice commas):

System.out.println(Arrays.toString(list.toArray()));

However, as others have pointed out, if you don't have sensible toString() methods implemented for the objects inside the list, you will get the object pointers (hash codes, in fact) you're observing. This is true whether they're in a list or not.

Here is some example about getting print out the list component:

public class ListExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Model> models = new ArrayList<>();

        // TODO: First create your model and add to models ArrayList, to prevent NullPointerException for trying this example

        // Print the name from the list....
        for(Model model : models) {
            System.out.println(model.getName());
        }

        // Or like this...
        for(int i = 0; i < models.size(); i++) {
            System.out.println(models.get(i).getName());
        }
    }
}

class Model {

    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

Since Java 8, List inherits a default "forEach" method which you can combine with the method reference "System.out::println" like this:

list.forEach(System.out::println);

System.out.println(list);//toString() is easy and good enough for debugging.

toString() of AbstractCollection will be clean and easy enough to do that. AbstractList is a subclass of AbstractCollection, so no need to for loop and no toArray() needed.

Returns a string representation of this collection. The string representation consists of a list of the collection's elements in the order they are returned by its iterator, enclosed in square brackets ("[]"). Adjacent elements are separated by the characters ", " (comma and space). Elements are converted to strings as by String.valueOf(Object).

If you are using any custom object in your list, say Student , you need to override its toString() method(it is always good to override this method) to have a meaningful output

See the below example:

public class TestPrintElements {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        //Element is String, Integer,or other primitive type
        List<String> sList = new ArrayList<String>();
        sList.add("string1");
        sList.add("string2");
        System.out.println(sList);

        //Element is custom type
        Student st1=new Student(15,"Tom");
        Student st2=new Student(16,"Kate");
        List<Student> stList=new ArrayList<Student>();
        stList.add(st1);
        stList.add(st2);
        System.out.println(stList);
   }
}


public  class Student{
    private int age;
    private String name;

    public Student(int age, String name){
        this.age=age;
        this.name=name;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString(){
        return "student "+name+", age:" +age;
    }
}

output:

[string1, string2]
[student Tom age:15, student Kate age:16]