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I've always found that when reading the API doc to resolve some specific problem, I see some other things that will come in handy in the future. End result is I solve the current problem and build...

a (a poor name for a variable that is supposed to hold some kind of data) is a reference to an ArrayList, not an array. When working with objects, you call their methods using ()s not []s.
You...

I assume you are trying to call the get() method.
use () with method calls. [] is for arrays.