Print array without brackets and commas

Question

I'm porting a Hangman game to Android and have met a few problems. The original Java program used the console, so now I have to somehow beautify the output so that it fits my Android layout. How do I print an array without the brackets and commas? The array contains slashes and gets replaced one-by-one when the correct letter is guessed. I am using the usual `.toString()` function of the `ArrayList` class and my output is formatted like: `[ a, n, d, r, o, i, d ]`. I want it to simply print out the array as a single `String`. I fill the array using this bit of code: ``` List publicArray = new ArrayList<>(); for (int i = 0; i < secretWordLength; i++) { hiddenArray.add(secretWord.substring(i, i + 1)); publicArray.add("-"); } ``` And I print it like this: ``` TextView currentWordView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.CurrentWord); currentWordView.setText(publicArray.toString()); ```

Accepted Answer

Basically, don't use `ArrayList.toString()` - build the string up for yourself. For example:

```
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
for (String value : publicArray) {
    builder.append(value);
}
String text = builder.toString();
```

(Personally I wouldn't call the variable `publicArray` when it's not actually an array, by the way.)

Print array without brackets and commas

Solution

Problem