Firstly... I am a new in Java...
I have a music dictionary that use an arreylist to store the terms and definition
The user use the terminal to interact with this dictionary.

private void addTerms () 
    {
        addTerm("Anathema","Atmosheric metal band from Liverpool, UK."
}

Because, I would like to make it more sophisticated, if someone write not a band but a letter eg A or B or C then the dictionary to give him as feedback all the bands that their first letter is A or B or C.

I am trying to do this with substring(0,1).
eg.

if (band.substring(0,1) = bandExists(band).substring(0,1)
{
System.out.println(i dont know what to print!!!!)
}

and another question...

if it works, and prints the bans names that their first letter is "A"

1. Agathodemon
2. Anathema
3. Annihilator
etc

how possible is to write a number eg 3 and to print out now the definition of the band?

You should probably create a class to represent a band that has a name and a description. Then you can use substring on the name part, and you should be comparing the substring to the user input. For example, say the user input is in a string called answer. Then you could compare like this:

if (band.getName().substring(0, 1).equals(answer))
   ...

In order to get numbers to print for your output, you need a variable to keep track of how many names you have output so far. For example, say your ArrayList is called musicCollection. The the loop might look something like this:

int counter = 1;
for (Band band : musicCollection) {
   if (band.getName().substring(0, 1).equals(answer)) {
      System.out.println(counter + ". " + band.getName());
      counter++;
   }
}

Possibly another.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.