make a variable name from a string?

[Kinnikinnick]

Hi all.
My first post... looking fo help on a school project.

I'm making a backjack game. I have a Card object that keeps the info about value, suit and card name. I want to make a Deck now with an arrayList containing all the cards I'll need. I don't want to spend so much time writing out the declaring, creating and arrayList adding for EACH card..

soo I tried to make a for each loop that would make up the names of the variable from 2 more arrayLists containing Strings for suit and card name...
umm.. I'll post some code and maybe that will explain better.. bha, it's hard for me to explain..

Thanks for any help you can give!!

        
        suitNames = new ArrayList<String>();
        suitNames.add("spades");
        suitNames.add("clubs");
        suitNames.add("diamonds");
        suitNames.add("hearts");
        
        cardNames = new ArrayList<String>();
        cardNames.add("Ace");
        cardNames.add("King");
        cardNames.add("Queen");
        cardNames.add("Jack");
        cardNames.add("Ten");
        cardNames.add("Nine");
        cardNames.add("Eight");
        cardNames.add("Seven");
        cardNames.add("Six");
        cardNames.add("Five");
        cardNames.add("Four");
        cardNames.add("Three");
        cardNames.add("Two");


        int count = 13;
        int value = 11;

        for (String suitName : suitNames) {
            for (String cardName : cardNames) {
                switch (count) {
                    case 13: value = 11; break;
                    case 12:
                    case 11:
                    case 10:
                    case 9: value = 10; break;
                    case 8: value = 9; break;
                    case 7: value = 8; break;
                    case 6: value = 7; break;
                    case 5: value = 6; break;
                    case 4: value = 5; break;
                    case 3: value = 4; break;
                    case 2: value = 3; break;
                    case 1: value = 2; break;
                    default: break;
                }
                
            ??(suitName + cardName) = new Card(cardName, suitName, value);??
            }
            count = 13;
        }

[ShoeNinja]

You are on the right track. I think the switch statement is not needed though. This is how I would do it....

Deck d = new Deck();
for(int i = 0; i < suitNames.size(); i++){
    for(int j = 0; j < cardNames.size(); j++){
        Card c = new card(cardNames.get(j), suitNames.get(i), j + 2);
        d.addCard(c);
    }
}

For this to work, you would have to reverse the order in which you add your cardNames to the ArrayList. The card at index zero would be a 'two' and so on.

[Kinnikinnick]

thx for the tip Ninja!

Problem with it tho... (I forgot to mention this earlier)

i need to give each card it's own object name so I can use this included method:

 /**
     * Add a single card to the deck.
     * @param a Card object
     */
    public void addCard(Card newCard)
    {
       deck.add(newCard); // add a card to the deck
    }

[ShoeNinja]

Yeah you're right. I don't know why I did that way. You don't actually need to give it an object name. You can just do something like:

addCard(new Card(cardNames.get(j), suitNames.get(i), j + 2));