Printing an ArrayList of user-defined Objects

Hi guys, I'm having trouble printing an ArrayList of Employees(My objects) for school. It keeps printing out what I think to be the hexcodes for various characters. I tried many variants of google searches but none of the answers that came up seemed to help.

Here is my code:

Code Java:

---

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
 
public class MyClass
{
	public static void main (String [] args)
	{
		ArrayList<Employee> list = loadEmployees();
		for (int i=0;i<list.size();i++)                                 //will show what this prints below
		{
			System.out.println(list.get(i).printerString());
		}
	}
 
	static ArrayList loadEmployees()
	{
		ArrayList<String[]> list = new ArrayList<String[]>();
		ArrayList<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
		BufferedReader br = null;
		String [] strArr, arr;
		Object [] objArr = new Object[5];
		String line;
		int count = 0;
		try
		{
 
			br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("MyFilePath"));
			strArr = new String[10];
			while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
			{
				strArr = line.split("\\s+");
				list.add(count, strArr);
				count++;
			}
		}
		catch(Exception e){}
		for (int i=0; i<list.size(); i++)           //I think that this for-loop may be part of the problem, basically its filling ArrayList employees with objects
		{
			list.toArray(objArr);
			arr = new String[objArr.length];
			for(int g=0; g<arr.length;g++)
			{
				arr[g] = objArr[g].toString();
			}
 
			String temp = Arrays.toString(arr);
			employees.add(i, Employee.create(temp));
		}
 
		return employees;
	}
 
}
 
class Employee
{
	String name, company, projectName, projectPosition;
	private Employee(String name, String company, String projectName, String projectPosition)
	{
		this.name = name;
		this.company = company;
		this.projectName = projectName;
		this.projectPosition = projectPosition;
	}
 
	public String printerString()
	{
		String str = "Name: " + name + "\nCompany: " + company + "\nProject Name" + projectName + "\nProject Position: " + projectPosition + "\n";
		return str;
	}
 
	public static Employee create(String str)
	{
		String[] holder = str.split("\\s+");
		return new Employee(holder[0], holder[1], holder[2], holder[3]);
	}
}

---

Not sure if needed, but here is the file I'm reading from:

Code =java:

---

	Joe 		EISI 		Project1	manager	
	Fred 		RIM 		Project3	developer
	Sally 		EISI 		Project2	developer
	Jane 		RIM 		Project3	qualityAssurance
	Molly 		EA 			Project2	graphicDesign

---

It is a .txt file.

My output looks like this:

Code =java:

---

Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
 
Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
 
Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
 
Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
 
Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,

---

I think that's everything, let me know if you need to know anything else.

Thanks,
er1111

What you're seeing is the output from Object.toString() - read the API documentation for the method, and then override it in your own classes. Writing toString() methods for my classes is one of my favourite Java programming activities: it's like putting the cherry on the cake.

Glancing at your code again, you may have more problems than that. If you have a list of Employee, or even a list of lists of Employee, all you should need to do is to implement Employee.toString() and then:

Code java:

---

List<List<Employee>> listOfListsOfEmployees = makeWeirdEmployeeListOfLists();
System.out.println(listOfListsOfEmployees)

---

List.toString will iterate over its members invoking toString() on each, concatenate all the return values nicely and return it.

Hi there! I did have a.toString() method, but I found that I needed the original.toString() method from Arrays.toString(), so I ended up just calling my .tostring() method printerstring.

For some reason when i called Arrays.toString() while my Employee.toString() method existed, it produced a different result, like I had somehow edited Arrays.toString() by creating Employee.toString(). I changed my Employee.toString() method to Employee.printerString();

-EDIT-
typos

-EDIT 2-
I ended up just messing around with my loadEmployees() method and my Employee.create method, cleaned it up and it ended up working. Here is the (semi-)finished code:

Code =java:

---

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public class MyClass
{
  public static void main (String [] args)
  {
    ArrayList<Employee> list = loadEmployees();
    for (int i=0;i<list.size();i++)
    {
      System.out.println(list.get(i).printerString());
    }
  }
 
  public static void processEmployees() 
  { 
    ArrayList<Employee> employees = loadEmployees();  
    printEmployees(employees); 
  }
 
  @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
  static ArrayList loadEmployees()
  {
    ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
    ArrayList<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
    BufferedReader br = null;
    String [] strArr, arr = new String[5];
    String line;
    int count = 0;
    try
    {
 
      br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("MyFilePath"));
      strArr = new String[10];
      while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
      {
        strArr = line.split("\\s+");
        employees.add(0, Employee.create(strArr));  //just added this part in, rather than that messy forloop
        count++;
      }
    }
    catch(Exception e){ System.out.println(e.getMessage()); }
 
    return employees;
  }
}
 
class Employee
{
  String name, company, projectName, projectPosition;
  private Employee(String name, String company, String projectName, String projectPosition)
  {
    this.name = name;
    this.company = company;
    this.projectName = projectName;
    this.projectPosition = projectPosition;
  }
 
  public String printerString()
  {
    String str = "Name: " + name + "\nCompany: " + company + "\nProject Name: " + projectName + "\nProject Position: " + projectPosition + "\n";
    return str;
  }
 
  public static Employee create(String[] str) //changed this method
  {
    return new Employee(str[1], str[2], str[3], str[4]);
  }
}

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