Pro Android 2: What does system.out.println in Android?

Question

To the best of my (current) understanding, Android has no console to send the messages to so the System.out.println messages get lost. Instead, Log.x (outputing to LogCat) should be used.

Yet, in the acclaimed Pro Android 2 book, listing 8-1 does just that:

    in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));

    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("");
    String line = "";
    String NL = System.getProperty("line.separator");
    while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
        sb.append(line + NL);
    }
    in.close();

    String page = sb.toString();
    System.out.println(page);

Does System.out.println really work in Android or is it only a typo?

If the former (i.e. not a typo), what does it really do and where should I expect to find the output?

Answer 1

System.out.println prints to whatever is currently defined as the "standard" output PrintStream. It is possible to hook this up to point to the log stream, but really there is no good reason to use it. Use Log.x.

This is probably just a typo in the book. Nothing in that code snippet is Android specific.