Question

I am writing an applet that will randomly pick 10 cards and show them on the screen. However, I am receiving a .class error and a ; needed error when I attempt to pass an String[]. Anyone help? This is my code:

import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.lang.Math;
import java.util.Random;

public class unit12Assignment extends Applet
{
Image card1 ... card52;

public void init()
{
    card1 = getImage( getDocumentBase(), "c1.gif" );
    ...
    card52 = getImage( getDocumentBase(), "sk.gif" );
}

public void getCards()
{
    String cardNumber; 
    double cardRandom;
    int cardRandomNumber;
    String[] cardSelection = new String[10];
    Random ran = new Random();

    for (int number = 0; number <=  9; )
    {
        cardRandom = ran.nextInt(52) + 1;
        cardRandomNumber = (int) Math.round( cardRandom );

        if ( cardRandomNumber > 0 && cardRandomNumber <= 52 )
        { 
            cardNumber =  "card" + cardRandomNumber;
            number++;
        }
    }   
    paint( String[] cardSelection );
}

public void paint(Graphics g, String[] card)
{
    setBackground( Color.green );
    g.drawImage( card[0], 10, 10, this);
    g.drawImage( card[1], 90, 10, this);
    g.drawImage( card[2], 170, 10, this);
    g.drawImage( card[3], 250, 10, this);
}

}

Answer 1

This line:

paint( String[] cardSelection );

should syntactically be

paint( cardSelection );

You only need to write the type (for example String[]) before a variable when you first declare it. From there it can just be referred to by its name.

I also notice that paint takes a Graphics argument as well as a String[], so you’ll need to pass that in as well:

Graphics g = getGraphicsSomehow();
paint(g, cardSelection);

EDIT: see Andrew Thompson’s answer for a disclaimer on using Graphics with an alternative solution.