Overiding the toString method

Question

If I have a method which takes an array of strings as the first argument and a string as the second argument.
I will compare the string to each index in the passed in array and add the smaller strings to an arraylist.
firstly to return an ArrayList, what type of method would it be, String?
Then how is the toString method overridden to print out the ArrayList if the ArrayList could vary depending on the passed in arguments?
;)

Answer 1

Encephalopathic wrote:
Implode wrote:
If I want to print out an ArrayList using a for loop, the toString method needs to be overridden?No, not at all. You simply loop through the ArrayList and println each element. Now if the elements are complex objects, then the toString method of the class that the elements are composed of may need a toString override.
I had to do that with previous examples.Code is worth a thousand words. What do you mean here? Did what?
Yeah, sorry, I guess I never explained properly. I know how to override toString method, (totally serperate question)but what if the ArrayList was containing object references , and the ArrayList was built depending on arguments passed to a method , how would the toString be overridden then?Again, you would need to have a toString override of the objects held by the ArrayList, not the ArrayList itself.
For e.g.,
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Random;
public class MyFoo {
private String text;
private int value;
public MyFoo(String text, int value) {
super();
this.text = text;
this.value = value;
@Override // here's the necessary toString override
public String toString() {
return text + ": " + value;
public static void main(String[] args) {
String[] strings = {"Mon", "Tues", "Wed", "Thurs", "Fri"};
Random random = new Random();
ArrayList<MyFoo> fooList = new ArrayList<MyFoo>();
for (String text : strings) {
fooList.add(new MyFoo(text, random.nextInt(100)));
// to print out in a for loop:
for (MyFoo myFoo : fooList) {
System.out.println(myFoo);
}Edited by: Encephalopathic on Nov 15, 2009 9:11 AMI did override toString using complex objects in previous examples(university assignments).
Thanks for the help. Forget the question. It was sidetrack.
Edited by: Implode on Nov 15, 2009 9:23 AM