What's the difference between import java.util.*; and import java.util.Date; ?

Question

I just want to output current and I wrote

import java.util.*;

at beginning, and

System.out.println(new Date());

in the main part.

But what I got was something like this:

Date@124bbbf

When I change the import to import java.util.Date; the code works perfectly, why?

====================================

The problem was, OK, my source file was "Date.java", that's the cause.

Well, it is all my fault, I confused everybody around ;P

And thanks to everyone below. It's really NICE OF YOU ;)

Answer 1

The toString() implementation of java.util.Date does not depend on the way the class is imported. It always returns a nice formatted date.

The toString() you see comes from another class.

Specific import have precedence over wildcard imports.

in this case

import other.Date
import java.util.*

new Date();

refers to other.Date and not java.util.Date.

The odd thing is that

import other.*
import java.util.*

Should give you a compiler error stating that the reference to Date is ambiguous because both other.Date and java.util.Date matches.