Hi there, first post!
First off, I apologise for asking such a basic question, but I am new to Java (done VB before..) and was wondering if you could please help me out with a little problem I'm having!
I have a method that reads data from a text file, uses a StringTokenizer, and puts the information in to an ArrayList called StudentArray
public void readFile()
{
ArrayList<String> studentArray = new ArrayList<String>(); //Declares new ArrayList to contain string values
try
{
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("/Users/John/Resources/Teech/studentList.txt")); //New bufferedReader and fileReader
String theText = in.readLine(); //Get next line from file
do
{
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(theText,","); //Splits the text by comma
int tokenNum = 0; //Delcares tokenNum variable, initialised at zero
do
{
String thisToken = st.nextToken(); //Sets current token as the next token in the file
System.out.println("Token "+tokenNum+": "+thisToken); //Prints out current token information to terminal
studentArray.add(tokenNum, thisToken); //Adds thisToken to the ArrayList at position tokenNum
System.out.println("The content of studentArray is: " + studentArray); //Prints out the current contents of studentList
System.out.println("The size of an studentArray is: " + studentArray.size()); //Prints out the current size of studentList
tokenNum++; //Increments tokenNum for next entry
}
while (st.hasMoreTokens());
theText = in.readLine(); //Get next line from file
System.out.println(theText);
}
while (theText != null);
}
// Catches any error conditions
catch (IOException e)
{
System.err.println ("Unable to read from file");
System.exit(-1);
}
}What I wish to do is now create a method to do a simple linear search of this array, so I created a separate method called linearSearch() and tried the following code
public void linearSearch()
{
String searchTerm = txtsearch.getText();
int notFound = -1;
int counter;
for(counter = 0; counter<studentArray.length; counter++)
{
if(searchTerm == studentArray[counter])
{
return counter;
}
else
{
return notFound;
}
}
}Now, I'm pretty sure my logic is right for the search, and the readFile method functions as intended, but I always get an error when trying to use the studentArray. How would I utilise studentArray in this method, by using its contents from the method above? I've not done a lot of parameter passing so any help would be appreciated.
Many thanks for your time.
