Question

I wish to return a String as follows:

    Josephine Blow (Associate Professor, Math)
         Teaching Assignments: **(for each course write on a seperate line)**
          Course No.: xxx \t Section No.: xxxx \t Course Name: xxxx \t Day and Time: dayOfWeek - timeOfweek
          If no teaching assignments print: none

Using an ArrayList variable named “teaches”, which from it I’m getting all my information.

I just can’t understand how should I return this kind of a String, which can be very long.
Should I use some kind of String buffer? How can I add the seperate line between each two sections.

Here’s my code, for make it clear:

public String toString() {
            String s ="";
            int i=1;
            if (this.teaches.isEmpty()){
                return "none";
            }

            for(Section current: this.teaches){
            s=s+"Course No"+i+" Section No:"+current.getSectionNo()+" Course Name:"+current.getRepresentedCourse().getCourseName()+" Day and Time"+current.getTimeOfDay();
            }

            return new String (this.getName()+" (Associatr Professor, "+this.department+" )"+s);

}

Answer 1

You don’t strictly need to use a StringBuffer or a StringBuilder. When Java concatenates two Strings, it internally uses something that is very similar to a StringBuffer. Using StringBuffer directly is slightly better, though I think you won’t notice it.

As of the newline, use the \n character. You can pipe many \n characters you like, that will insert some empty lines in the string.

For example:

s+="Course No"+i+" Section No:"+current.getSectionNo()+" CourseName:"+current.getRepresentedCourse().getCourseName()+" Day and Time"+current.getTimeOfDay()+"\n\n";

will leave an empty line between every course.

There are some special characters you can add using some codes that start with \. See: http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.lang/character-escape-codes-in-java.html