Question

I’m working on a Java project in which I have the getter method below in the class TextAnalyzer:

public Hashtable<String, Double> getTotalFeatureOccurances() {
    return(feat_occur_total);
}//getTotalFeatureOccurances

I also have the private class variable:

private Hashtable<String, Double> feat_occur_total;

I use the getter, add more terms to the hash, and then want to get the hash again, however it always comes back empty. Even worse if I don’t add or remove anything from the hash, but do two gets, I still receive and empty hash the second time.

Here is my code in main:

TextAnalyzer ta = new TextAnalyzer();
        feat_occur_cat = ta.wordOccurancesCount(text, features);
        feat_occur_total = ta.getTotalFeatureOccurances();

        Enumeration<Double> e = feat_occur_total.elements();
        while(e.hasMoreElements()) {
            System.out.println(e.nextElement());
        }//while

        feat_occur_total.clear();
        feat_occur_total  = ta.getTotalFeatureOccurances();

        e = feat_occur_total.elements();
        System.out.println("\n\nSECOND GET\n\n");
        while(e.hasMoreElements()) {
            System.out.println(e.nextElement());
        }//while

I get the output:

2.0
1.0
5.0
1.0
1.0
3.0
2.0
3.0


SECOND GET

Here is the entire class:

public class TextAnalyzer {

    TextAnalyzer() {
        this.feat_occur_total = new Hashtable<String, Double>();
    }

    public String[][] wordOccurancesCount(String text, Vector<String> features) {
        String[][] occur = new String[features.size()][features.size()];

        for(int ndx=0; ndx<features.size(); ndx++) {
            int count=0;

            Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(?:^|\\s+|\\()\\s*(" + features.elementAt(ndx).trim() + ")\\w*(?:,|\\.|\\)|\\s|$)", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE | Pattern.MULTILINE | Pattern.CANON_EQ);
            Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
            m.usePattern(p);

            while(m.find())
                count++;

            occur[ndx][0] = features.elementAt(ndx);
            occur[ndx][1] = String.valueOf(count);

            if(this.feat_occur_total.containsKey(features.elementAt(ndx))) {
                double temp = this.feat_occur_total.get(features.elementAt(ndx));
                temp += count;
                this.feat_occur_total.put(features.elementAt(ndx), temp);
            }//if
            else {
                this.feat_occur_total.put(features.elementAt(ndx), Double.valueOf(count));
            }//else
        }//for

        return(occur);
    }//word

    public Hashtable<String, Double> getTotalFeatureOccurances() {
        return(feat_occur_total);
    }//getTotalFeatureOccurances

    private Hashtable<String, Double> feat_occur_total;

}//TextAnalyzer

Answer 1

This:

feat_occur_total.clear();

Clears the Hashtable. Since you returned a reference to the original variable, you cleared the Hashtable itself, not a copy. So returning it again will return the cleared Hashtable.