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

java, out, println

Solution

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`.

Problem

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.

Original source