How does Java concatenate 2 strings?

Question

Why does the following print 197, but not 'bc'?

System.out.println('b' + 'c');

Can someone explain how to do proper concatenation on Java?

P.S. I learnt some Python, and now transforming to learn Java.

Answer 1

'b' and 'c' are not Strings, they are chars. You should use double quotes "..." instead:

System.out.println("b" + "c");

You are getting an int because you are adding the unicode values of those characters:

System.out.println((int) 'b'); // 98
System.out.println((int) 'c'); // 99
System.out.println('b' + 'c'); // 98 + 99 = 197