Overriding toString method

[son012189]

Design a class named Person and its two subclasses named Student and Employee. Make Faculty and Staff subclasses of Employee. A person has a name, address, phone number, and email address. A student has a class status(freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior). Define the status as a constant. An employee has an office, salary, and date hired. Define a class named MyDate that contains the fields year, month, and day. A faculty member has office hours and a rank. A staff member has a title. Override the toString method in each class to display the class name and the person's name. Implement the classes. Write a test program that creates a Person, Student, Employee, Faculty, and Staff, and invokes their toString() methods.

Here is my attempt:

import java.util.Date;

public class PersonStudentEmployee {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Person myPerson = new Person();
		System.out.println(myPerson.toString());
		Student myStudent = new Student();
		System.out.println(myStudent.toString());
		Employee myEmployee = new Employee();
		System.out.println(myEmployee.toString());
		Faculty myFaculty = new Faculty();
		System.out.println(myFaculty.toString());
		Staff myStaff = new Staff();
		System.out.println(myStaff.toString());
	}
}
class Person {
//define var1, var2, var3, var4
	String name;
	String address;
	String phoneNumber;
	String email;
//no arg constructer
	Person() {
		name = "John Doe";
		address = "1234 Main St.";
		phoneNumber = "(123)-456-7890";
		email = "yahoo@yahoo.com";
	}
//define method toString()
	public String toString() {
		return super.toString() + "Person" + name;
	}
}
class Student extends Person {
//define class status
	public static final int FRESHMEN = 1;
	public static final int SOPHOMORE = 2;
	public static final int JUNIOR = 3;
	public static final int SENIOR = 4;
	int classStatus;
//no arg constructer
	Student() {
		classStatus = FRESHMEN;
	}
//define method toString()
	public String toString() {
		return super.toString() + "Student" + name;
	}
}

class Employee extends Person {
//define var1, var2, var 3
	String office;
	String salary;
	Date dateHired = new java.util.Date();
//no arg constructer
	Employee() {
		office = "111";
		salary = "$80,000";
	}
//define method toString()
	public String toString() {
		return super.toString() + "Employee" + name;
	}
}

class Faculty extends Employee {
//define var1, var2
	String officeHours;
	String rank;
//no arg constructer
	Faculty() {
		officeHours = "9-10 am";
		rank = "Professor";
	}
//define method toString()
	public String toString() {
		return super.toString() + "Faculty" + name;
	}
}

class Staff extends Employee {
//define var1
	String title;
//no arg constructer
	Staff() {
		title = "Janitor";		
	}
//define method toString()	
	public String toString() {
		return super.toString() + "Staff" + name;
	}
}

class MyDate {
//define var1, var2, var 3
	int year;
	int month;
	int day;
}

This is the output that I get:

Person@addbf1PersonJohn Doe
Student@9304b1PersonJohn DoeStudentJohn Doe
Employee@a90653PersonJohn DoeEmployeeJohn Doe
Faculty@c17164PersonJohn DoeEmployeeJohn DoeFacultyJohn Doe
Staff@61de33PersonJohn DoeEmployeeJohn DoeStaffJohn Doe

This is the output that I should get:

Person John Doe
Student John Doe
Employee John Doe
Faculty John Doe
Staff John Doe

I have no idea why so many random numbers and letters appear in my output. How can I get rid of them? What is wrong with my code?

[Norm]

The output you are seeing is from the Object class's toString() method. It returns the class name followed by the object's hashcode. Does your code call the Object class's toString() method? That is where the Strings like this "Person@addbf1" comes from.

[son012189]

Oh I see. No, my code is supposed to call the toString method from each class. How would I fix this?

[JosAH]

Oh I see. No, my code is supposed to call the toString method from each class. How would I fix this?

All your toString() methods look like this:

public String toString() {        
   return super.toString() + "Staff" + name;    
}

It your class directly (implicitly) extends from the Object class, super.toString() is the method defined in the Object class; hence the funny output. Remove the super.toString() part.

kind regards,

Jos

[son012189]

Thank you. I removed it and finally got the desired output.