> AFAIK, the change to print would've broken > existing code compatibility.
True, although the current behavior: if(s == null) s = "null"; is a bit quirky, don't you think? I'd be in favor of not allowing null, but just let the s.length() call throw the NullPointerException rather than explictly checking for null on each and every call. When a one arg method throws NPE, it's pretty easy to figure out what's null.
