Question

I have a switch statement that takes the letter grade and returns the corresponding GPA; however, it throws a cannot-find-symbol error for the letters (A, B, C, D & F)! I’ve checked the javaDocs for guidance but couldn’t find something wrong. What is causing this error?

switch (grade) {
        case A:  nv[i] = 4; //nv = numerical value
                 break;
        case B:  nv[i] = 3;
                 break;
        case C:  nv[i] = 2;
                 break;
        case D:  nv[i] = 1;
                 break;
        case F:  nv[i] = 0;
                 break;
    }

Answer 1

A isn’t a valid character literal – 'A' is.

So you want:

switch (grade) {
    case 'A':  nv[i] = 4; //nv = numerical value
             break;
    case 'B':  nv[i] = 3;
             break;
    case 'C':  nv[i] = 2;
             break;
    case 'D':  nv[i] = 1;
             break;
    case 'F':  nv[i] = 0;
             break;
}

You should also probably have a default case for situations where the grade isn’t one of those.

Oh, and your code could also be written as:

nv[i] = "FDCBA".indexOf(grade);

with a check for nv[i] being -1 afterwards (meaning that the grade wasn’t in that set).