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I have used e.printStackTrace in one of my Java applications. However, I read in some forum that we should avoid using printStackTrace(). Could somebody explain to me why I should avoid using e.printStackTrace() and what are the alternatives to it? Please share the piece of code for an alternative to e.printStackTrace()

Anjit Singha
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    Does this answer your question? [Why is exception.printStackTrace() considered bad practice?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7469316/why-is-exception-printstacktrace-considered-bad-practice) – Turamarth Nov 18 '20 at 11:57

3 Answers3

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Loggers should be used instead of printing the whole stack trace on stream. e.printStackTrace() prints a Throwable and its stack trace to stream which could inadvertently expose sensitive information.

Loggers should be used instead to print Throwables, as they have many advantages.

more info : https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/2017/A3_2017-Sensitive_Data_Exposure.html

Faizan Burney
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I usually log errors this way:

} catch (IOException ex) {
  log.log(Level.WARNING, ex.getMessage(), ex);
}

If you use lombok, you can add logger to your class with @Log annotation on class.

Jakub Biernaczyk
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You should avoid it because it is better to use a logger like Log4j, so that you can write logs in a file & manage the logging better.

Indeed, the method

e.printStackTrace()

is used to print the stack of the exception directly in the console, and that (for a production application) is bad.

Andrea Coluzzi
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