Question

I’m a Java newbie, and this is a real basic, basic question, so please don’t
miss the tree for the forest.
I just need to know how to access the data coming back from the method

    private static int toInt( String number )
    {
        int multiplicand = 0;
        // do stuff to figure out a multiplicand
        return multiplicand;
    }

    public static void main( String[ ] args )
    {
        int anotherVariable = 53;
        toInt( args[ 0 ] );

So, what do I say here after I’ve come back from the toInt method in order to access what is in multiplicand?
Lets say I want to multiply what came back in multiplicand * anotherVariable.
I cannot use multiplicand because the editor just says “cannot resolve multiplcand to a variable.”

Thank you in advance to all the great programmers with the patience to tolerate us newbies.

Answer 1

you assign the result of the function invocation to a variable, and then use that.

int result = toInt ("1");

You can now use result as you see fit; it contains whatever you returned in the method, which was the value of multiplicand. So in your case, you can now do

int anotherResult = result * anotehrVariable;

Note you can also do

int anotherResult = toInt(args[0]) * anotherVariable;

without assigning the result of your invocation of toInt to an intermediary variable.

I prefer to assign function invocations to variables; makes debugging easier. If you want to use the result more than once, it’s almost always better to use a variable.