Somebody please explain the benefit of using @Override

Question

We already have a toString method in the Song class

@Override
public String toString() {
  printf("song %s by %s", getSong, getArtist);
}

But why in the main method, we just do this

System.out.printf("Add %s %n", song);

Instead of

System.out.printf("Add %s %n", song.toString);

Did @Override do something with it?

Answer 1 · 2016-01-23T22:24:30Z

January 23, 2016 10:24pm

The Override annotation is there so you're aware that you're overriding a method from a parent class or interface.

In fact, you can do away with the @Override annotation and it'll work exactly the same, it's just easier to see when you put the notation on. Any time you write a method which has the same signature (name, return type, parameters are all the same) it'll Override (or over write, if that's easier) the original method it was passed down.

You could call toString() explicitly, but in the printf() method, you're always going to get the object's toString method anyway, if it's not already a string.

So the second argument you pass in is a song, and printf() is going to be like "Okay this isn't a string...so I'll call its toString() method to plug in here"

That toString() method is available in every single object in Java, but you had to Override it in order for the response to be meaningful (say, a song title and artist) instead of just returning a string representation of its address in memory.

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Nhat Anh Dao

Nhat Anh Dao

Somebody please explain the benefit of using @Override

1 Answer

Gavin Ralston

Gavin Ralston

Nhat Anh Dao

Nhat Anh Dao