<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Mar 12, 2014, at 12:45 AM, Wang Weijun <<a href="mailto:weijun.wang@oracle.com">weijun.wang@oracle.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; ">I do not want to rename it to getString() and let all child classes call it in their toString().</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "></blockquote></div><div><br></div>It is probably best to define a *static* method to hold the default implementation, so that the only candidate for overriding is toString itself.<div><div><br></div><div>See MethodHandleInfo and InfoFromMemberName (in java.lang.invoke) for one example of this pattern.</div></div><div><br></div><div>— John</div></body></html>