Thread: stuck on Iterator

public abstract class AbstractList<E> implements Iterable<E> {
 
    public int indexOf( E elem ) {
      /*This instance method is supposed to find the object E in this list and return its left most occurrence in the list. If the object does not exist within the list then return -1.  */
int counter = 0;
while(this.next != elem)   //this.next = the info part of the node in front "this"
counter++;
    }
return counter;
 
}

What I mean to accomplish is basically to keep my pointer at node1 and check node2 for elem. If elem doesn't exist in node2 then counter goes up and until I find elem in a node counter++

Now the error I get is that next is not a value specified and is not defined for abstract.

So my question is, How can I keep my pointer at the beginning node while checking the next node in the list for elem and returning the index of the node where elem is found.
I can handle the -1 return I expect with a simple if statement.
This is my linkedlist class..

import java.util.NoSuchElementException;
 
public class LinkedList<E> extends AbstractList<E> {
 
    private static class Node<T> {
 
 private T value;
 private Node<T> next;
 
 private Node( T value, Node<T> next ) {
     this.value = value;
     this.next = next;
 }
    }
 
    private Node<E> first = null;
 
    private class LinkedListIterator implements Iterator<E> {
 
 private Node<E> current;
 
 public boolean hasNext() {
     return ( ( ( current == null ) && ( first != null ) ) || 
       ( ( current != null ) && ( current.next != null ) ) );
 }
 
 public E next() {
 
     if ( current == null ) {
  current = first;
     } else {
  current = current.next;
     }
 
     if ( current == null ) {
  throw new NoSuchElementException();
     }
 
     return current.value;
 }
 
    }
 
    public Iterator<E> Iterator() {
        return new LinkedListIterator();
    }
 
    public int size() {
 
        Node<E> p = first;
        int count = 0;
 
        while ( p != null ) {
            p = p.next;
            count++;
        }
 
        return count;
    }
 
 
    public boolean addFirst( E e) {
 
 boolean added = false;
 
        if ( e != null ) {
 
     first = new Node<E>( e, first );
     added = true;
 
 }
 
        return added;
    }
 
}

Thanks in advance!

Mjall

Suppose root is your pointer that is pointing to the first node, you may have two possible solutions.
1. If you only want to check immediate node only, do root.getnext().getvalue().
2. If you want to keep your root pointer at the start and want to check all nodes, take a temporary pointer and first assign it the root's address and then in loop check for values until it gets null or it's next gets null.