Thread: Trouble with isolating a particular address in a for loop

OK, so I have to make a method that assigns a seat in an airplane. There are two options: First Class or Coach Class. I am having trouble with my reserveSeat() method. There are multiple ways to accomplish this but I am attempting to stick to the logic I have already provided. Here are all the methods, variables, objects defined already:

-If the user chooses to reserve a seat (an integer of 0):

if(choice == 0)
			{
				String classSpec = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Specify Class type");
				{
					if(theSeat.checkSeatAvailability() == true)
					{		
						theAirplane.assignSeat(classSpec);
						flag = true;
					}
					else
						if(theSeat.checkSeatAvailability() == false)
						{
							JOptionPane.showMessageDialog( null,
									"There are no more seats", 
									"Seating." + " The Seat: " + theSeat.getSeatNum() + " is Occupied",
									JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE);
							flag = true;
						}
 
				}
				flag = true;
			}

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My reserveSeat method looks like this:

public void assignSeat(String spec)
	{
		boolean flag = true;
		if (spec.equals("First Class"))
		{
			 for(int i = 0; i < 4 && flag ; i++)
			    {
			            seatArray[i] = new Seat(i, spec);
			            if(seatArray[i].checkSeatAvailability() == true)
			            {
			                seatArray[i].reserveSeat();
			                flag = false;
			            }
			            else
			            {
			                flag = true;
			            }
			    }
		}
 
		else
		{
 
			for(int i = 4; i < 10 ; i++)
			{
				while(flag)
				{
					seatArray[i] = new Seat(i, spec);
					if(seatArray[i].checkSeatAvailability() == true)
					{
						seatArray[i].reserveSeat();
						flag = false;
					}
					else
					{
						flag = true;
					}
				}
			}
		}
 
	}

if (spec.equals("First Class"))

Using literals here ("first Class") is a dangerous way to code. If you have typed in the same literal in more than one place in the program there is a 100% chance that sometime in the many program you code you will mistype one and the if test that uses it will fail. The compiler will not help you find that kind of error, and you will spend a lot of time trying to find the spelling error.

A better practice is to define a final variable with the value and then use that variable in the code.

final String FirstClassNM = "FirstClass";
...
spec = FirstClassNM;
...
if (spec.equals(FirstClassNM))

Then if you misspell the name of the variable, the compiler will give an error message.