.length undefined?

From:
Merciadri Luca <Luca.Merciadri@student.ulg.ac.be>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.help
Date:
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:51:26 +0100
Message-ID:
<87y643fgv5.fsf@merciadriluca-station.MERCIADRILUCA>
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Hash: SHA1

Hi,

I've got some code like this in a try block:

==
BufferedReader input_file = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(input_filename));
String curr_line;
int line_length_ref, k;

for (int i = 1; (curr_line = input_file.readLine()) != null; i++) {
    if (i == 1) {
       line_length_ref = curr_line.length; // save the length of the first line of the file
    }
    else {
         if (curr_line.length != line_length_ref) {
            System.err.println("Input file must contain same number of columns through rows.");
            System.exit(1);
         }
    }
}
==

However, I'm getting

==
cannot find symbol
symbol : variable length
==
for the curr_line.length calls. But isn't a .length attribute defined
for every String object?

Thanks.
- --
Merciadri Luca
See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
- --

If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.
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