Question

this is my first question on stack overflow but I have some experience in Java. I am making a Java application at the moment (575 lines and counting!) and am trying to search through an ArrayList for a string. But I do not want it to be exact! Let me clarify: I want to iterate through each ArrayList element and search that string for another string. if the string is found in the ArrayList element, (for now) I want it printed to the console. I hope I have been clear enough.
Following is the relevant code. All variables are defined and the code compiles, just no output (from the search function) is printed. I am pretty sure that it is because the for loop doesn’t execute, but I am puzzled as to why.

//the keylistener that calls the search() function, attached to a JTextField that the query is entered into
class searchFieldListener implements KeyListener {
    searchFieldListener() {
    }
    public void keyTyped(KeyEvent event) {
        if (event.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_TYPED) {
            query = searchField.getText()+Character.toString(event.getKeyChar());
            System.out.println(query);
            for (i = 0; i == nameList.size(); i++) {
                search(query, i);
            }
        }
    }
    public void keyReleased(KeyEvent event) {

    }
    public void keyPressed(KeyEvent event) {

    }
}

//the troublesome search() function
void search(String query, int iter) {
    searchString = nameList.get(iter);
    System.out.println(searchString);

    if (searchString.indexOf(query) != -1) {
        System.out.println(Integer.toString(iter));
    } else {
        System.out.println("not found \n");
    }
}

Variables/Objects and uses:

• searchFieldListener
  The KeyListener for the JTextField called searchField for obvious reasons.
• query
  The string of the text to be searched for.
• i
  Why does everyone use i in loops? I guess it’s a coding tradition.
• nameList
  The ArrayList of names (well, duh).
• searchString
  The string to be searched in (as in, try to find query in searchString).
• iter
  The number of iterations the for loop has been through so far.

  ---

  Once again I hope I have been clear enough. Thanks!

Answer 1

The reason why your for loop is not executing is because of the condition used in the loop:

for (i = 0; i == nameList.size(); i++) 
              ^^

Since the size method of the ArrayList class returns the number of elements you might want to have
i < nameList.size() instead.