JAva help, need to understand

Hello everyone, I desperately need someone to help me figure out why the output, listed on the bottom of post, is giving me a result of 220. I need to understand why this is giving me the result of 220 and if someone can help me fix this to where the result is my initials instead of 220. please help!!!!!!!!

import java.util.Scanner;

public class UserID {

public static void main(String args[]) {

Scanner login = new Scanner(System.in);

System.out.println("Enter your First Name?.");

String firstname = login.nextLine();
char first = firstname.charAt(0);
System.out.println(first);


System.out.println( "Enter your complete middle name?.");
String middlename = login.nextLine();
char middle = middlename.charAt(0);

System.out.println(middle);

System.out.println("Enter your last name?.");

String lastname = login.nextLine();
char last = lastname.charAt(0);
System.out.println(last);
//String name = (first + middle + last);
System.out.println( first + middle + last );



Output:
Enter your First Name?.
Daniel
D
Enter your complete middle name?.
Eben
E
Enter your last name?.
Stevens
S
220

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dstevens

I need to understand why this is giving me the result of 220

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Due to implicit conversion the chars are converted to their Unicode numbers which are 'D'=68, 'E'=69 and 'S'=83. The sum is 220.

To get the wanted conversion you can give the compiler a hint to nudge it in the right direction, like

System.out.println("" + first + middle + last );

Now the compiler will interpret the + operators involved to mean String concatenation rather than integer addition. So the problem was that + is overloaded for both integers and String and you didn't get the implicit conversions you expected. To be very explicit about it you can do,

System.out.println(Character.toString(first) + Character.toString((middle) + Character.toString(last));

Now there's no doubt but it's kind of tedious so most people rely on implicit conversion with enougth information to make the compiler do the right thing.