Thread: help with a programing assignment.

Anyone who sets an assignment that uses parallel arrays should not be allowed to teach.

Hi, I actually am having some trouble with this same exact assignment(word for word). Our professor is difficult to say the least... but the trouble I am having is:
creating a method (report) to read 3 other methods (heading, details, summary). this "report" method has to be ran 3 times during the program. once with info read in from input file, then two other times after being sorted. My problem is that I am having trouble constructing a method that will read the other 3. I first tried (heading)(details) and (summary) as void methods... but then I am having trouble calling those from the (report) method.... I have also tried creating the (report) method as a void method and the other 3(heading)(details)(summary) as String methods.... but I am pretty sure that is the wrong way to go about it as the (detail) method needs to output multiple lines from the arrays.... and as a String method it only return the first line... So I am pretty sure that is the wrong approach. Any help you could give or guidance as to how to appoach this assignment would be great. thanks and have a great day!


This is the basic setup I have so far.... just outline and not even close to finished just cant get past getting this report method to call.
import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;

public class pinePayroll

{public static void main (String[]args) throws Exception
{Scanner inFile = new Scanner (new FileReader("empData.dat"));
PrintWriter outFile = new PrintWriter ("Payroll.out");
double [][] data = new double [30][7];
String [] names = new String [30];
String str = null;
String detail = null;
int n = input(data, names, inFile); //n is name counter 25 total.


report(outFile,names, n);

sortName();

report(outFile, names, n);

sortPay();

/report(outFile, names, n);

outFile.close();
}
//************************************************** ****************************************
public static int input(double [][] data, String [] names, Scanner inFile)
{int i = 0;
int m = 0;
String line;
StringTokenizer st;
while (inFile.hasNext() && i < names.length)
{line = inFile.nextLine();
st = new StringTokenizer(line);
m = st.countTokens();
names [i] = st.nextToken();
for (int j = 1; j < m-2; j++)
names [i] = names [i] + " " + st.nextToken();
data [i][5] = Double.parseDouble(st.nextToken());
data [i][6] = Double.parseDouble(st.nextToken());
i++;}
return i;
}

//************************************************** ****************************************
public static String report(PrintWriter outFile, String[]names, int n)
{//outFile.println(heading());
//outFile.println(summary(n));
return (detail(outFile,names, n));
outFile.println("\f");}

//************************************************** ****************************************
public static String heading()
{return " NATURAL PINE FURNITURE COMPANY" +
"\n PAYROLL REPORT" +
"\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------" +
"---------------------" +
"\nNAME" + " " + "NET PAY" + " " + "GROSS PAY" + " " +
"FEDERAL TAX" + " " + "STATE TAX" + " " + "DUES" + " " +
"HOURS" + " " + "PAY RATE" +
"\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------"
+ "---------------------";}
//************************************************** ****************************************
public static void detail(PrintWriter outFile, String [] names, int n)
{for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
outFile.println(names[i]);}
//************************************************** ****************************************
public static String summary(int n)
{return "\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------" +
"---------------------" +
"\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------" +
"---------------------" +"\n\nThe total number of names processed is " + n;}

When either of you finish this project can you send me your code for it in an email or something? or post it here? I'm new to programming and I'm really curious to look at some code like this that imports information from a file.