How do you print the content of an array in Java?

In Java, arrays do not override toString() method, so the content cannot be printed just by specifying the array reference as illustrated below.

int[] intArray = new int[] {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
System.out.println(intArray);     // prints something like '[I@1732a4df'
char[] charArray = new char[] {'J', 'a', 'v', 'a', 'p','e','d','i','a','.','n','e','t'};
System.out.println(charArray);     // prints javapedia.net ,wow

One of the approach is that iterating through all the array elements, retrieve each element and print it to the console as shown below.

int[] intArray = new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

for (int element : intArray) {
	System.out.println(element);
}

Since Java 5, we have inbuilt API Arrays.toString(arr) and Arrays.deepToString(arr) to print the contents of the single dimensional array.

The difference between Arrays.toString and Arrays.deepToString is that Arrays.toString accepts primitive type arrays as well as object arrays where as deepToString accepts only object arrays.

The below example shows how to use the Arrays API to print the content of an array.

int[] intArray = new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

System.out.println(Arrays.toString(intArray));

Byte[] byteArray = new Byte[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

System.out.println(Arrays.deepToString(byteArray));

output:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

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