It's often convenient or necessary to convert an object to a String
because you need to pass it to a method that accepts only String
values.
The reverseIt
method used earlier in this lesson
uses StringBuffer
's toString
method
to convert the StringBuffer
to a String
object before returning the String
.
class ReverseString {
public static String reverseIt(String source) {
int i, len = source.length();
StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer(len);
for (i = (len - 1); i >= 0; i--) {
dest.append(source.charAt(i));
}
return dest.toString();
}
}
All classes inherit toString
from the Object
class
and many classes in the java.lang
package override this method to
provide an implementation that is meaningful to that class.
For example, the "type wrapper" classes--Character
,
Integer
, Boolean
,
and the others--all override toString
to provide a
String
representation of the object.