Re: Stranger compiler error?

From:

Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:17:29 GMT

Message-ID:

<t755h.4869$l25.4327@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>

Knute Johnson wrote:
....

for (Enumeration<Integer> e=hash.keys(); e.hasMoreElements();)
String[] array = hash.get(e.nextElement()); // <---- error

....

You are confusing two very different entities, a statement and a
variable declaration.

The for MUST be followed by a statement.

You have a local variable declaration, which is not itself a statement
but can appear in a compound statement, such as a brace-enclosed block.

Incidentally, it seems a bit pointless because you assign to array and
then immediately leave its scope of declaration.

C:\com\knutejohnson\redrock\scores>javac test1.java
test1.java:10: '.class' expected
            String[] array = hash.get(e.nextElement());
                     ^
test1.java:10: not a statement
            String[] array = hash.get(e.nextElement());
                  ^
2 errors

The first error message shows what happened when the compiler tried to
interpret the first few tokens as a statement, not a declaration.
"String[]" is not very likely as the start of a statement, but it could
have been something like "String[].class.notifyAll();". Not finding
".class" killed that idea.

The second message points out that it is not a statement, which is the
real problem.

Patricia