Question

I’m having an issue with scope and I don’t know how to solve it. Here’s a simple program to illustrate my problem:

public class testing {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        test(1,2);
        System.out.println(answer);
    }

    public static int test(int x, int y) {
        int answer = x + y;
        return answer;
    }
}

So I pass a couple parameters to the test method and I return answer, so shouldn’t I be able to access the result of answer in my main method? But I can’t, I get an error. What am I doing wrong? Java is telling me that I can’t access answer, that the scope doesn’t extend to the main method even though I put the return statement in the test method. How else can I return answer then (without passing it as a parameter)?

Answer 1

You didn’t store the return value in any variable. Also, the variable answer is defined locally in test method, and will not be visible in main method. Hence, you would have got the compiler error in your code.

You need to have this code in your main method: –

int result = test(1,2);
System.out.println(result);

Now, what happens here is, it stores the return value of test(1, 2) in a local variable result, which has nothing to do with the answer variable defined in test method. And then you simply print the result back.

Furthermore, you can change your test method to: –

public static int test(int x, int y) {
    // int answer = x + y; // No need to define a local variable.
    return x + y;
}

and your main method can be modified to: –

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(test(1, 2));
}

Note that, this eliminates the need to declare the local variables (either in main or test method).