Home/ Questions/Q 7506465
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-29T22:16:07+00:00

Suppose I have a class called Foo . This class will be modified by

  • 0

Suppose I have a class called Foo. This class will be modified by many people, and WILL print information to the console. To this effect, we have the following method:

private void print(String message){ ... }

which prints out to the screen in the format we want.

However, while reviewing code from other devs I see that they constantly call System.out.println(...)
instead, which results in barely-readable printouts.

My question is the following: is it possible to prevent any and every use of System.out.println() in Foo.java? If so, how?

I’ve tried looking this up, but all I found had to do with inheritance, which is not related to my question.

Thanks a lot!
N.S.

EDIT: I know that whatever I have to do to prevent the use of a method could be removed by a dev, but we have as a policy never to remove code marked //IMPORTANT so it could still be used as a deterrent.

EDIT2: I know I can simply tell the devs not to do it or use code reviews to filter the “errors” out but 1) I’m already doing it and it costs a lot of time and 2) the question is whether this is possible or not, NOT how to deal with my devs.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Although communicating that developers should not use System.out directly would be preferred, you could set System.out to another PrintStream, then use the alternative PrintStream in the private method. That way, when people use System.out.println they won’t output anything but you’ll still be able to use the alternative PrintStream… something like they do here: http://halyph.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-disable-systemout.html

    • 0