Question

I’ve been trying to implement a hash table in Java for an exercise. For that, I’m trying to use an array of linked lists. Following is a part of the code:

class HashSet implements HashInterface {

    private final int TABLE_SIZE = 100;
    private LinkedList<Integer>[] myTable;

    myTable = (LinkedList<Integer>[]) new LinkedList[TABLE_SIZE];

    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
        myTable[i] = new LinkedList<Integer>;
}

The problem is, whenever I run the code, it says:

C:\Java\hash>javac Main.java
Main.java:17: error: <identifier> expected
    myTable = (LinkedList<Integer>[]) new LinkedList[TABLE_SIZE];
           ^
Main.java:19: error: illegal start of type
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
    ^
Main.java:19: error: ')' expected
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
              ^
Main.java:19: error: illegal start of type
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
                 ^
Main.java:19: error: <identifier> expected
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
                  ^
Main.java:19: error: ';' expected
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
                   ^
Main.java:19: error: > expected
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
                                  ^
Main.java:19: error: '(' expected
    for (int i = 0; i < TABLE_SIZE; i++)
                                     ^
Main.java:20: error: ']' expected
        myTable[i] = new LinkedList<Integer>;
                ^
Main.java:20: error: ';' expected
        myTable[i] = new LinkedList<Integer>;
                 ^
Main.java:20: error: <identifier> expected
        myTable[i] = new LinkedList<Integer>;
                                            ^
11 errors 

What is it that I’m doing wrong here?

Answer 1

You’ve put code outside a method (and outside static initialization blocks).

You can declare variables, but not execute code. The bulk of your code should be in methods.