How is the .toString() overloaded in the Arrays class

Question

I came across the concept where a method cannot be overridden and overloaded at the same time. But when I used Arrays.toString(),

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the toString() method has been overridden and overloaded at the same time. How is that possible?

Answer 1

You are overriding when you have the exact same method signature in a subclass. You are overloading when you have two equal named methods with different type or number of parameters. You can override a method and then overload it but you can write a method and it can happend that when you overload it you end up overriding a super class method. One thing doesn't exclude the other.

Let's have a Super class like this:

public class Super {

    public void testMethod() {}

    // Overload
    public void testMethod(String param) {}
}

And then extend it with a sub class like this:

public class Sub extends Super {

    // Override only
    @Override
    public void testMethod() {}

    // Overload only
    public void testMethod(int param) {}

    // Overload and Override
    @Override
    public void testMethod(String param) {}
}

As you can see, you can have only overload, only override or both in multiple ways. As said, one thing doesn't exclude the other.