Question

How can I improve this?

The relationship is one to one and continuous on [-1,5] so i was thinking of using enum, but I’m not sure how to compare a string value to an enum value.

If there is any better way to do this, please suggest.

Thanks!

private int evaluateWord(String sval) {
    if (sval.equals("program"))
        return 1;
    else if (sval.equals("begin"))
        return 2;
    else if (sval.equals("end"))
        return 3;
    else if (sval.equals("int"))
        return 4;
    else if (sval.equals("if"))
        return 5;
    else
        System.exit(0);

Answer 1

Have you considered stuffing the mapping into a HashMap once, and then just querying the map?

For example, something like this:

 private static final Map<String,Integer> m_map = new HashMap<String,Integer>();
 static {
     m_map.put( "program", 1 );
     m_map.put( "begin", 2 );
     m_map.put( "end", 3 );
     m_map.put( "int", 4 );
     m_map.put( "if", 5 );
 }

 private int evaluateWord(String sval) {
     Integer value = m_map.get( sval );
     if ( null != value ) {
        return value;
     }
     else {
        System.exit(0);
     }
 }

By the way, it looks as if you’re writing a parser. It can be reasonable to write a parser by hand. Another option to consider, unless you have a good reason to write it by hand, is a parser generator like ANTLR.