Question

I have a question about weather it’s legal to use a switch statement inside a for loop. The way its written below Eclipse gives me an error and won’t let me use switch(n) on the second statement in the for loop. What I want to do is write…

This old man, he played 1
He played knick-knack on my thumb.

Is there a better way of solving the problem below with a for loop and switch statement? I want to write out the paragraphs 10 different with the different number and different case. So 1 thumb, 2 shoe, 3 knee…. until 10.

import acm.program.*;

public class SingSong extends ConsoleProgram {

    public void run() {
        for (int n = 1; n <= 10; n++) {
            println("This old man, he played " + n);
            println("He played knick-knack on my" + switch(n));
            println("With a knick-knack, paddy-whack,");
            println("Give your dog a bone");
            println("This old man came rolling home");

            switch (n) {            
                case 1 : println("thumb"); break;
                case 2 : println("shoe"); break;
                case 3 : println("knee"); break;
                case 4 : println("door"); break;
                case 5 : println("hive"); break;
                case 6 : println("sticks"); break;
                case 7 : println("heaven"); break;
                case 8 : println ("pate"); break;
                case 9 : println("spine"); break;
                case 10 : println("shin"); break; 
            }
        } 
    }
}

Answer 1

What you want is a method you’ll call:

private String which(int n) {
  switch (n) {
  case 1 : return "thumb";
  case 2 : return "show";
  case 3 : return "knee";
  case 4 : return "door";
  case 5 : return "hive";
  case 6 : return "sticks";
  case 7 : return "heaven";
  case 8 : return "pate";
  case 9 : return "spine";
  case 10 : return "shin";
  default: return "";

  }
}

Then replace

println("He played knick-knack on my" + switch(n));

with

println("He played knick-knack on my" + which(n));

Another, more succint approach would be to create an array of strings:

static final String[] which = {
  "thumb","show","knee","door","hive", "sticks","heaven","pate","spine","shin"};

and then just use

println("He played knick-knack on my" + which[n]);