Thread: A little help with looping my array

Nearing the end of this assignment and am having a little trouble figuring out a way to get my loop to return to the proper place each time it repeats. Here's the section of code I'm working on:

public static void main(String[] args) {
 
		Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
		final int size = 100; //max array size
		int numEmployee = 0; //number of array entries
		int i;
		int choice=0;
		Employee [] employeeData = new Employee[size]; //an array of objects
		employeeData[numEmployee] = new Employee();
 
 
		System.out.println("1. Enter new employee data");
		System.out.println("2. Display employee data");
		System.out.print("3. Quit \n=> ");
		choice = input.nextInt();
 
		while(choice!=3){
			if(choice == 1){
				employeeData[numEmployee].setFirstName();
				employeeData[numEmployee].setLastName();
				employeeData[numEmployee].setHoursWorked();
				employeeData[numEmployee].setPayRate();
				numEmployee++;
			}else if(choice == 2){
				for(i = 0; i<numEmployee; i++);
				employeeData[i].getFirstName();
				employeeData[i].getFirstName();
				employeeData[i].getHoursWorked();
				employeeData[i].getPayRate();
			}else{
				System.out.println("Invalid entry. Please try again.");
			} //close if
		} //close while
		System.out.println("You have quit.");
	} //close main

After each run through the while loop, until the user enters 3, I need the code too loop back to the menu section and ask the user to choose between 1, 2, and 3 again. Usually I would just call the method name at the end of the loop, but there is no method name in this case...or is there a way to create a type of method inside main? I tried but was only getting errors. Any help is appreciated.

A basic rule to follow: Anything that needs to be repeated needs to be inside of the loop. So if you need to re-display a menu, then that code should be inside of the while loop, not before the while loop.

And no, you cannot directly nest methods inside of another method in Java (although you can indirectly by nesting classes, but let's not go there just yet).

Hey, thanks. That did the trick... but also brought up a new problem it seems. After I select 1 for the first time and enter some information it loops me back to the menu and asks me to select again. But this time, I get a 'Null Pointer Exception' error when I try to enter another set of information. How can a value be null the second time through, but not the first?

This seems to be an array problem now. Should I move my question to the proper board?

Please post your latest edition of the code, please post the error message, and please indicate by comment in the code which line is causing the NPE, something like

public class Foo {
 
   public Foo() {
     bar();
     baz(); //  ******** NPE occurs here *******
  }
}

so we can easily find it.

Here's the updated code, and the error message is:
"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at Employee.main(Employee.java:109)"

public static void main(String[] args) {
 
		//declare an object
		Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
		final int size = 100; //max array size
		int numEmployee=0; //number of array entries
		int i;
		int choice=0;
		Employee [] employeeData = new Employee[size]; //an array of objects
		employeeData[numEmployee] = new Employee();
 
		while(choice!=3){
			System.out.println("1. Enter new employee data");
			System.out.println("2. Display employee data");
			System.out.print("3. Quit \n=> ");
			choice = input.nextInt();
 
			if(choice == 1){
				employeeData[numEmployee].getUserEntry(); //******** NPE occurs here *******
				numEmployee++;
			}else if(choice == 2){
				for(i = 0; i<numEmployee; i++);
				System.out.println(employeeData[i].getFirstName()+"\t"+employeeData[i].getLastName());
			}else if(choice == 3){
				System.out.println("You have quit.");
			}else{
				System.out.println("Invalid entry. Please try again.");
			} //close if
		} //close while
	} //close main