Newbie help with ArrayList!

Hello all

I have set up an ArrayList to store objects and I want to create a method to search through the ArrayList and return the number of times a single String object (specified in the method header parameter).

For example:

Array1:
Bill, Jim, Bill, Ted, Bill
Method returns: 3

The method would search through the array, see "Bill" 3 times and return the integer 1 indicating that "Bill" appears 3 times in the Array.

I am making sense? I'm clueless here. I know what I want to accomplish, but when it gets down to the coding i'm completely stumped!

As a starting point, I have...

public int countNames(String name)


Thanks :)

try something like

Code:

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if Array1[x].contains(String object from parameter){
        count++;
}

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and just put a loop around it from 0-array1.size();

Quote:

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see "Bill" 3 times and return the integer 1

---

This part doesn't make sense. What is returned if found 2 times or 5 times?
The basic logic is to use a loop,
In the loop get the next item in the ArrayList (read the API doc to see which method to use to get the next item)
Compare the item to the searched for Object. Read the API doc for the type of Object to see how to test its contents. For example equals() could be used for Strings)
Use an if() with the above compare, when true increment the count.
When there are no more items in the ArrayList, end the loop.