Question

I have a class set to return a string like so:

package TextRPG;

public class File {

    static String file;

    public static void setFile(String fileLocation) {
        file = fileLocation;
    }

    public static String getFile(){
        return file;
    }
}

But when i try to call it like so:
PrintWriter save = new PrintWriter(File.getFile());
I get an Error. What am I doing wrong?
EDIT, the netbeans error is :
cannot find symbol
symbol: method getFile()
location: class File

Answer 1

You have shot yourself in the foot because you are ignoring the Java naming conventions.

Variable names should start with a lowercase letter. Thus:

package textrpg;

public class File {
    static String file;

    public static void setFile(String fileLocation) {
        file = fileLocation;
    }

    public static String getFile(){
        return file;
    }
}

The java compiler doesn’t care about this … but your foot shot happened because you declared a field called File in a class called File, and Java’s rules for disambiguating the name collision came up with a strange answer.

(If you included the compiler error message, it would be easier to explain …)

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There are a couple of other problems with this class:

• The is very non-OO code. You have a static field and static methods for getting and setting it. This kind of thing is a bit “icky” … and will lead to problems if you need to reuse the code in another context, or implement unit tests, etcetera.

• You are using the same name as a well-known standard class (java.io.File). This could lead to problems later on if some other class in your application needs to use both java.io.File and textrpg.File.

• You are also ignoring the convention about how to form a package name that is designed to avoid package name collisions.

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Before you write more code, I strongly recommend that you read the Sun Java Coding Conventions. And unless you have a really really good reason not to, follow them. (“I couldn’t be bothered” is NOT a good reason, IMO.)

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Ah. So the compilation error is in this:

PrintWriter save = new PrintWriter(File.getFile());

and it is saying that it can’t find a method called getFile() in File.

Without seeing the rest of that class, I can’t be sure. However, I suspect that you are importing java.io.* … and THAT means that the File in the code snippet will be referring to java.io.File … which doesn’t have a getFile() method!