Question

So basically I have a GridWorld Project that I’m doing right now in my AP Comp Sci class. I’m doing Pacman. Here is my code for the act method (for those unfamiliar with GridWorld, the act method is called every time an actor is expected to make a new move) :

public void act()
{
    Location loc = getLocation();

    if(direction==null) {
    }

    else if(direction.equals("NORTH")) {
        Location next = loc.getAdjacentLocation(loc.NORTH);
        if(getGrid().isValid(next) && (getGrid().get(next)==null || getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)) {
            if(getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)
                addFood();
            moveTo(next);
            direction = "NORTH";
        }
    }

    else if(direction.equals("SOUTH")) {
        Location next = loc.getAdjacentLocation(loc.SOUTH);
        if(getGrid().isValid(next) && (getGrid().get(next)==null || getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)) {
            if(getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)
                addFood();
            moveTo(getLocation().getAdjacentLocation(getLocation().SOUTH));
            direction = "SOUTH";
        }
    }

    else if(direction.equals("EAST")) {
        Location next = loc.getAdjacentLocation(loc.EAST);
        if(getGrid().isValid(next) && (getGrid().get(next)==null || getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)) {
            if(getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)
                addFood();
            moveTo(getLocation().getAdjacentLocation(getLocation().EAST));
            direction = "EAST";
        }

        else if(getLocation().getCol()==20 && getLocation().getRow()==9) {
            moveTo(new Location(9,0));
            direction = "EAST";
        }
    }

    else if(direction.equals("WEST")) {
        Location next = loc.getAdjacentLocation(loc.WEST);
        if(getGrid().isValid(next) && (getGrid().get(next)==null || getGrid().get(next) instanceof Food)) {
            moveTo(getLocation().getAdjacentLocation(getLocation().WEST));
            direction = "WEST";
        }

        else if(getLocation().getCol()==0 && getLocation().getRow()==9) {
            moveTo(new Location(9,20));
            direction = "WEST";
        }
    }
}

The reason for the weird wording in the last two if statements is bc I want the Pacman to be able to teleport in the real game. Now when I run the game, about 90% of the time it works but in the other 10% I get an IllegalArgumentException bc it says I am trying to move to a place that is not on the board (eg. (9,-1) and (9,21)). I want to know how I can catch or throw or whatever I need to do to stop this from happening. I have never used catch or throw so also please try to explain your reasoning thanks!

Answer 1

To throw an exception, you use keyword throw. To catch, you use the try / catch construct. See this for more details:

• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/try.html

For your case, you’d do something like this – this is a test case:

try {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Threw an IllegalArgumentException");
} catch(IllegalArgumentException e) {
    System.out.println("Caught an IllegalArgumentException..." + e.getMessage());
}

You should, however, look into your code to see why IllegalArgumentException is being thrown anyway and fix that part. Using exceptions and try / catch is for unexpected events, not events that you expect to happen and that you can handle in a better way.

For example, FileNotFoundException gets thrown when a file could not be found. You generally try / catch that, so that you do something if the file was not found. However, if it’s expected in a reasonable number of cases that the file might not be there, it would be better to first check if the file exists and then if it does actually do something with it.