println method - what do the last 2 letters (l & n) stand for?

java out println
user2911290 picture user2911290 · Nov 25, 2013 · Viewed 8.8k times · Source

I guess it's related to println()'s newline functionality ('\n'), but in abbreviated letter-based form, that would be nl rather than ln. Thank you for any comments.

Answer

Alnitak picture Alnitak · Nov 25, 2013

It's historic.

Pascal had write and writeln.

write would output a string, leaving the cursor at the end of that string.

writeln (where ln was short for "line") would write a whole line of text and move the cursor to the start of the next line, typically by automatically appending a CRLF or some other OS-dependent control sequence.

Java inherited the abbreviation, but used print instead of write.

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