Thread: What is wrong with my I/O code?

Hello friends;

It is Joe here again with ; just finished my first chapter but got stuck on one of my challenges. I am not using any IDE i am using command line, and the compiler returns an error: "The local variable userNum may not have been initialized"

My questions are:
1 - How do i make my code work?
2 - How do i initialize that variable and is it really necessary?
3 - There must be a way to shorten the variable declaration of int from 1 to 12, which one is it?
4 - Is it necessary to close the reader variable with reader.close() in this case? Because i have not been using it with strings exercises I/O and it does not give any problems.

Thank you for your help. My challenge bellow:

"Write an application that accepts a number from the user and prints its multiplication table values (multiply it by 1 through 12 and print the results)"

The following is the application i am writing:

import java.io.*;
 
public class multiplicationInput
{
   public static void main (String[] arguments)
   {
      int userNum; //variable for user input
      int num1, num2, num3, num4, num5, num6, num7, num8, num9, num10, num11, num12; //variables with set values from 1 to 12
      BufferedReader reader;
 
      reader = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (System.in));
 
      num1 = 1;
      num2 = 2;
      num3 = 3;
      num4 = 4;
      num5 = 5;
      num6 = 6;
      num7 = 7;
      num8 = 8;
      num9 = 9;
      num10 = 10;
      num11 = num10 + num1;
      num12 = num11 + num2;
 
      try
      {
         System.out.print ("\nEnter a number for multiplication:"); //Output asking for user to input a number
         userNum = Integer.parseInt (reader.readLine( )); //The number the user input is assigned to the userNum variable
      }
 
      catch (IOException ioe) //Handling input/out exception errors
      {
         System.out.println ("I/O Exception error has occurred, using 1...");
         num1 = num2 = 1;
      }
 
 
      /*
       * was supposed to handle number format exception, but i will ignore it for now until application is working
       * The code bellow is how i wanted to show the multiplication table with the user entered number 
       * multiplied by the set values and the result displied. Once i know exactly where my code is failing
       * will continue with other lines until multiplied by 12
      */
      System.out.println (num1 + " x " + userNum + " = " + (num1 * userNum));
 
   }
 
}

Joe

When posting code, please use the highlight tags to preserve formatting.

This looks like a job for an array.

What happens if your readline() method throws an Exception? What value should userNum take, since you haven't initialized it to anything?

Originally Posted by shimazaky

So, what you are saying is that since i have not initialized the userNum, i must handle and exception for readline() method? How do i do that?

That's not at all what I'm saying. Consider this code:

public class Test{
   public static void main(String... args){
      String s;
      boolean t = false;
      if(t){
         s = "test";
      }
      System.out.println(s);
   }
}

Try to compile it, and you'll get a similar error. The reason for this error is this: what should be printed?

Originally Posted by shimazaky

The trick was to put the last print statement inside the try block

No that is an awful hack. The correct solution was to initialise the variable correctly.

Originally Posted by Junky

No that is an awful hack. The correct solution was to initialise the variable correctly.

Eh, I could see putting the print statement inside the try block.

The correct thing to do is to actually handle errors. The problem at hand is: what if the user enters text instead of a digit? That's what might cause an Exception, and what should happen in that case? Only printing out the answer if the user enters a digit sounds reasonable, although the next logical step is to do correct error handling and prompt the user for another digit.

Yeah my reply was a bit short. The point I was trying to make was that simply moving a line of code to get rid of an error message instead of dealing with that error correctly is not a good approach. Similar to declaring everything static to get around the "cannot access non-static from a static" error (whatever the full text is).

Yeah, eclipse's auto-fix of that static error is the bane of my existence.

It's a larger problem of "oh, this random thing that I don't understand seemed to make the problem go away, let's move on" without actually understanding the problem. That just leads to bigger headaches down the road.