Question

I tried to declare s.next() after the try-catch block but it wouldn’t work! The s would only have the drop down if it is inside the try block.

I don’t want to lump Parsing inputs, take appropriate actions all into the try block, because they wouldn’t throw the FNFE and IOE. What can I do here?

public static void main(String[] args) 
      {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        //Open file; file name specified in args (command line)
        try{
            FileReader freader = new FileReader(args[0]);
            Scanner s = new Scanner(freader);

        }catch(FileNotFoundException e){
            System.err.println("Error: File not found. Exiting program...");
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(-1);
        }catch(IOException e){
            System.err.println ("Error: IO exception. Exiting...");
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(-1);
        }
        // if i try to declare s.next() here it would not work

Answer 1

I think you mean you want to use s.next() and that it won’t work.

to do that, declare s as a variable outside the try/catch block, set it to null there. Then assign it where you assign it now, but without the declaration. If my assumption is correct, your problem is that s is no longer an active variable outside the try/catch, because it is declared within that block.

FileReader freader = null;
Scanner    s       = null;
try { freader = new FileReader(args[0]); // risk null pointer exception here
      s = new Scanner(freader);
    }
catch { // etc.