Question

I have a section of code that is puzzling me. I define an integer array inside an if/else statement because the length of the array depends on the length of 2 inputs to the method. My problem is that outside the if/else statement, the variable definition seems to be lost.

import java.util.Arrays;

public class test {

  public String AddArrays(int [] arg1, int [] arg2) {
    int L1 = arg1.length;
    int L2 = arg2.length;
    if (L1 > L2) {
        int[] output = new int[L2];
        for (int i = 0; i < L2; i++) {
            output[i] = arg1[i] + arg2[i];
        }
    } else {
        int[] output = new int[L1];
        for (int i = 0; i < L2; i++) {
            output[i] = arg1[i] + arg1[i];
        }
    }
    String result = Arrays.toString(output);
    return result;
    }
}

The error I get is on the statement String result = Arrays.toString(output); where Eclipse tells me that output cannot be resolved to a variable.

…and by the way, yes, I know that this is not the way to add two integer arrays — I reduced this from more complex code to demonstrate the problem!

Answer 1

Define output before if statement. Like this:

int[] output;
int L1 = arg1.length;
int L2 = arg2.length;
if (L1 > L2) {
    output = new int[L2];
    for (int i = 0; i < L2; i++) {
        output[i] = arg1[i] + arg2[i];
    }
} else {
    output = new int[L1];
    for (int i = 0; i < L2; i++) {
        output[i] = arg1[i] + arg1[i];
    }
}
String result = Arrays.toString(output);
return result;
}

When you declared output inside the if statement it simply had only that block scope.