Question

I’m trying to compare an index from my array of char’s to a string, I’m using the .equals method but I’m running into errors. Any help?

if (j[1].equals("A"))
{j[1] = 10;}

I keep getting this error:

int cannot be dereferenced
else if (j[1].equals("A"))

Answer 1

In order to compare single characters, you need to use the == operator because char is a primitive type and Java does not allow to call methods on primitive types. Also, you can’t directly compare with a string, you need to compare to a char. Constants of type char are written with single quotes as opposed to double quotes which denote String constants.

Thus your code would be:

if (j[1] == 'A') 

You should then use another variable for storing the value 10. Although you could theoretically store it in the array (characters are just numbers, too), this would be very confusing code. Thus use an additional int variable.

Also note that in Java, you should speak of chars, not of Chars. The reason is that there is also a class name Character which also represents a single character, but as an object instead of a primitive type. Thus when you say Char, it is not clear if you mean char of Character.