println method - what do the last 2 letters (l & n) stand for?

Question

I guess it's related to println()'s newline functionality ('\n'), but in abbreviated letter-based form, that would be nl rather than ln. Thank you for any comments.

Rollicking

println - print line. Meaning it will use \n at the end of the printed line. – Tolman

Its not asking to print new line but it prints the given line with \n at the end. – Canoe

println - Print a line(a complete line, which is terminated with a new line character(default line separator) or the line separator property). – Blate

If you got your answer, go ahead and accept it. Please do not add it to your question. It defeats the whole purpose of a Q&A if you're going to include the answer in your question itself. Or else, if you've something new to share with us(which hasn't been posted already), you can post a new answer to your own question also. – Blate

Answer 1

It's historic.

Pascal had write and writeln.

write would output a string, leaving the cursor at the end of that string.

writeln (where ln was short for "line") would write a whole line of text and move the cursor to the start of the next line, typically by automatically appending a CRLF or some other OS-dependent control sequence.

Java inherited the abbreviation, but used print instead of write.

Bleachers

I'll consider this in my future language. I'll call it maroun and marounln. – Adept

just an example of bad naming IMHO – Endplay

Really? When I learned Java, I first thought, that it is PrintIn() (with the upper case i) :-) – Veda

Answer 2

Hi check if this is helpful..

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/PrintStream.html

You can find it under the heading Class PrintStream

ln simply means LINE - it prints the character/string in a NEW LINE.

Disoperation

This doesn't answer the question. – Pattiepattin

Why not? He just wanted to know what ln stands for and a link to verify that – Disoperation

@Aishvarya agree, however I wouldn't post an answer but rather a comment to answer this question. – Tolman

Hi check if this is helpful. - This really shouldn't be the first line of an answer, IMHO. It looks like a suggestion at the most. – Blate

What he is saying is convincing, ln stands for Line not New Line, and that why its ln not nl – Raviv

@R.J agree with you on that, it's confusing. – Tolman

actually it doesn't print it in a new line. It ensures that the next output will appear on a new line. – Bleachers

@Tolman Fair enough. Link only answers already on board now. And the last line might be some light yet OP him self proposed that :) – Kazantzakis

Answer 3

println stands for printline.

There is nothing special about it :P It will print a new line instead of printing it on the same line.

Sheena

A source would be welcome. OP asks what it stands for, and it's possible to find other hypothesis, like the fact "ln" looks like "\n". – Pattiepattin

Referring to your edit - It will print a new line instead of printing it on the same line. Wrong. it'll print the line and end it with a new line character. – Blate

@R.J According to docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/…, it will print the string and then invoke println() meaning it will print a new empty line. – Sheena

The order is important here. If nothing is specified, it prints nothing(blank) and terminates it with the new line character. – Blate

@dystroy IMO OP is just overthinking it. Confusing \n with nl or ln. In regards to his question of what "ln" stands for: it stands for line. – Sheena

@dystroy the source is history - other languages used fooln to mean do foo followed by a move to next line operation. – Bleachers

@Bleachers I know that. What I'm curious about is if historically "ln" stands for "\n" (like print + \n) or for an abbreviation of line. But that interesting part of the question is probably off-topic for SO. – Pattiepattin

@dystroy no, it doesn't (and AFAIK cannot) stand for \n because that's a "C"ism, and Pascal had writeln before C existed. – Bleachers

@Bleachers That's a damn good point there. I had totally forgotten the pascal literals (#13#10 wasn't it ?). – Pattiepattin

Answer 4

println() method Terminates the current line by writing the line separator string. The line separator string is defined by the system property line.separator, and is not necessarily a single newline character ('\n').

 public void println() {
     newLine();
 }

Also, there are overloaded methods println(String s), println(Char c), println(Double d), println(Float f), println(Long l), println(int i), println(bool b).

Here is a link which gives all code.
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/root/jdk/openjdk/6-b14/java/io/PrintStream.java#PrintStream.println%28%29.

Carman

Answer 5

println -> print line.

That means that it will print the line you gave it through the parameter, and goes with the cursor to the next line, waiting for another input.

Callipash