Question

I have a test class with fields which contain test content. It looks like:

class Test {
  public static String s1 = " ... long string ... ";
  public static String s2 = " ... long string ... ";
  public static String s3 = " ... long string ... ";
}

Now I would like to use these fields in a loop, so I wrote an additional array

  public static String[] a = {s1, s2, s3};

This structure works fine, but is a bit ugly because everytime I add or delete a field, I have do change the array, too.

The only solution to re-structure my code without the manually manipulating of the array is to write it all in the array at once:

class Test {
  public static String[] a = {" ... long string ... ", " ... long string ... ",
                              " ... long string ... "};
}

As you can see, this makes the code unreadable, especially when we have to deal with > 10 long strings.

What could be a better structure ?

Answer 1

If you want to use them in a loop, it makes me think that they are homogeneous in some way. Also the variable names (s1, s2, s3) are meaningless as they stand. So go for array (or use Arrays.asList() idiom).

If each string has a different meaning and is used separately, definitely have separate variables. If you want to have best of both worlds (separate variables and a list that is easily maintainable, consider this):

class Test {
    public static final String s1 = str(" ... long string ... ");
    public static final String s2 = str(" ... long string ... ");
    public static final String s3 = str(" ... long string ... ");

    public static final List<String> strings = new ArrayList<>();

    public static String str(String s) {
        strings.add(s);
        return s;
    }
}

And last but not least, remember about final keyword.