Question

I have the following code snippet where some strings are initialized in the if block:

String serialmask = request.getParameter( "serialmask"); 
String serialincrement = request.getParameter( "serialincrement");
if (serialmask == "1") { 
  String tserialmask = "aaa########"; 
} 
else { 
  String tserialmask = "";
}
if (serialincrement == "1") {  
  String tserialincrement = "aaa^^^^^^^^";
}
else { 
  String tserialincrement = ""; 
}
out.println(
  itemimport( 
    partnumber, 
    itemcost, 
    itemlistprice, 
    itemdescription, 
    PurchProdLineKey, 
    UnitMeasKey, 
    itemclasskey, 
    trackmethod, 
    tserialmask, 
    tserialincrement
  )
);

The error I’m getting is "cannot find symbol"
symbol : variable tserialmask in the out.println(itemimport(....tserialmask,tserialincrement)); statement.

I tried declaring the variables outside of the if block and this seems to bring on even more errors saying it’s already been declared.

Answer 1

You need to declare the variable first, but then just assign it. Here’s the version for tserialincrement (the same is true for tserialmask)

String tserialincrement;
if (serialincrement == "1")
{
   tserialincrement = "aaa^^^^^^^^";
}
else
{ 
   tserialincrement = "";
}

However, there are two things wrong with this:

• You’re using == on a string, which is a bad idea in almost all situations; use equals

• You can do it in one statement (per variable) with the conditional operator:

  String tserialmask = "1".equals(serialmask) ? "aaa########" : "";
  String tserialincrement = "1".equals(serialincrement) ? "aaa^^^^^^^^" : "";
  

In addition, I’d suggest nicer variable names, using Pascal casing (e.g. serialMask) and something more useful than just “t” as a prefix. (What does that mean?)