Best way to convert an ArrayList to a string

Answer 1

Download the Apache Commons Lang and use the method

 StringUtils.join(list)

 StringUtils.join(list, ", ") // 2nd param is the separator.

You can implement it by yourself, of course, but their code is fully tested and is probably the best possible implementation.

I am a big fan of the Apache Commons library and I also think it's a great addition to the Java Standard Library.

Answer 2

Android has a TextUtil class you can use http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/TextUtils.html

String implode = TextUtils.join("\t", list);

Answer 3

How about this function:

public static String toString(final Collection<?> collection) {
    final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("{");
    boolean isFirst = true;
    for (final Object object : collection) {
        if (!isFirst)
            sb.append(',');
        else
            isFirst = false;
        sb.append(object);
    }
    sb.append('}');
    return sb.toString();
}

it works for any type of collection...

Answer 4

Would the following be any good:

List<String> streamValues = new ArrayList<>();
Arrays.deepToString(streamValues.toArray()));   

Answer 5

You can use a Regex for this. This is as concise as it gets

System.out.println(yourArrayList.toString().replaceAll("\\[|\\]|[,][ ]","\t"));

Answer 6

If you happen to be doing this on Android, there is a nice utility for this called TextUtils which has a .join(String delimiter, Iterable) method.

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("Item 1");
list.add("Item 2");
String joined = TextUtils.join(", ", list);

Obviously not much use outside of Android, but figured I'd add it to this thread...