System.out.println() In Java?

 In Java, the dot operator can only be used to call methods and variables so we know that ‘out’ must be either a method or a variable. Now, how do we categorize ‘out’? Well, ‘out’ could not possibly be a method because of the fact that there are no parentheses – the ‘( )’ – after ‘out’, which means that out is clearly not a method that is being invoked. And, ‘out’ does not accept any arguments because only methods accept arguments – you will never see something like “System.out(5,6).println”. This means ‘out’ must be a variable.

We now know that ‘out’ is a variable, so we must now ask ourselves what kind of variable is it? There are two possibilities – it could be a static or an instance variable. Because ‘out’ is being called with the ‘System’ class name itself, and not an instance of a class (an object), then we know that ‘out’ must be a static variable, since only static variables can be called with just the class name itself. So now we know that ‘out’ is a static member variable belonging to the System class.

The fact that ‘println()’ is clearly a method, we can further classify ‘out’. We have already reasoned that ‘out’ is a static variable belonging to the class System. But now we can see that ‘out’ must be an instance of a class, because it is invoking the method ‘println()’.

When the JVM is initialized, the method initializeSystemClass() is called that does exactly what it’s name says – it initializes the System class and sets the out variable. The initializeSystemClass() method actually calls another method to set the out variable – this method is called setOut().

The more exact answer to the original question is this: inside the System class is the declaration of ‘out’ that looks like: ‘public static final PrintStream out’, and inside the Prinstream class is a declaration of ‘println()’ that has a method signature that looks like: ‘public void println()’.

Here is what the different pieces of System.out.println() actually look like:

//the System class belongs to java.lang package
class System {
  public static final PrintStream out;
  //...
}

//the Prinstream class belongs to java.io package
class PrintStream{
public void println();
//...
}