Convert String to char[] got unexpected result

[AhFai Chan]

package ArraysAndVectors;

public class String2CharArray {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		// 	
		String s = new String("ABCDEFG");
		
		char[] a = s.toCharArray();
		
		System.out.println("s = \"" + s + "\"\t\ta = \"" + a + "\"");
		System.out.println("s.length() = " + s.length() + "\t\ta.length = " + a.length);
		
		for (int i=0; i<s.length(); i++) 
			System.out.println("s.charAt(" + i + ") = " + s.charAt(i) + "\t\ta=[" + i + "] = " + a[i]);
	}
}

Output:

s = "ABCDEFG" a = "[C@604c9c17"
s.length() = 7 a.length = 7
s.charAt(0) = A a=[0] = A
s.charAt(1) = B a=[1] = B
s.charAt(2) = C a=[2] = C
s.charAt(3) = D a=[3] = D
s.charAt(4) = E a=[4] = E
s.charAt(5) = F a=[5] = F
s.charAt(6) = G a=[6] = G
>

[Campbell Ritchie]

What is unexpected about that? What did you expect and what was different? Have you read what the members of an array type are? They are all in the Java® Language Specification, but that can be difficult to understand. Look particularly what the toString method is.