Question

I’m taking a CS course and this code is giving me problems.

         while (statScan.hasNext()){

        currentStat = statScan.next();
        if (currentStat =  h);
        {       
            hStat++;
        }
        System.out.println("" + currentStat);

Look at the “if” statement. Java says “cannot convert string to boolean” and from my understanding boolean is a true/false sorta thing so what Java isn’t understanding is how to evaluate and compare the strings. How do I force it to do so?

Answer 1

The = operator in Java is intended as an assignment operator, so when you write x = y you don’t mean is x equal to y but assign value of y to x.

The comparison operator is the == operator but this will compare either primitive types (int, char, float, etc) either references to objects that is not the usual behavior you need. For anything that is not a primitive type you should consider using the method inherited by Object which is boolean equals(Object o). To understand exactly why it is so, take a look here or here.