creating variables in a for loop?

[sehudson]

if I have a for loop, how can I create new variables inside the loop (i.e, if I wanted to create a new string each time the loop ran. I dont think I can make the name of the string variable:
int size = 6;
for (int i=0; i<size; i++){

**create a new string**

}

[sunde887]

You can't. It will live only as long as the closing curly brace.

You can however declare an array/arraylist before the loop, then add Strings to it each time you go through the loop. Outside of the loop you can assign each item in the array/arraylist to a new string variable.

[sehudson]

how would the naming work. Can you give me an example based on my loop?

[Junky]

It is not clear what you are trying to do.

If you are trying to create a String by adding on new data to the old String each time around the loop, then you can declare a variable before the loop and use it inside. By the wa if this what you are doing then use a StringBuffer or StringBuilder instead.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(int index = 1; index <=10; index++) {
    sb.append(String.valueOf(index);
    sb.append(" ");
}
String output = sb.toString().trim();
System.out.println(output);

[sehudson]

maybe I should take this one step at a time;

One question:

if I had a method and I wanted to run a for loop x times, where x is the size of the first array, how would I get the value of x in my for loop,

public void myMethod(int[x][] matrix){

for (int i=0; i< i need the size of x; i++){

}

}

[NRitH]

maybe I should take this one step at a time;

One question:

if I had a method and I wanted to run a for loop x times, where x is the size of the first array, how would I get the value of x in my for loop,

public void myMethod(int[x][] matrix){

for (int i=0; i< i need the size of x; i++){

}

}

Either declare a variable to store the length of matrix before the for loop, or inside it:

for (int i=0, size=matrix.length; i < size; ++i)

[sunde887]

any time you see a 2d array stop thinking of it as such.

all arrays are items.

Some arrays hold primitives, some hold objects. Since an array can hold an object, it can hold another array. So when you see a 2d array think of this

array[] arr = new array[3];
arr[0] = new int[3];
arr[1] = new int[3];
arr[2] = new int[3];

so to find the size of the 2d array it would be arr.length.

In your matrix example you would do

int[][] someMatrix = new int[3][3];
for(int i = 0; i < someMatrix.length; i++)

You can easily test this by opening notepad and creating the following program

public class Test{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    int[][] someMatrix = new int[3][4];
    System.out.println(someMatrix.length);
    for(int i = 0; i < someMatrix.length; i++){
      System.out.println(i + ": " +someMatrix[i].length);
    }
  }
}

compile this and run it and see what happens.

[Junky]

Another thing. A 2D array does not have to be symmetric. You can have what is known as a jagged array. Expanding upon the above example

public class Test{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    int[][] someMatrix = {{1,2,3},{3}, {4,5,6,7}, {3,4}};
    System.out.println(someMatrix.length);
    for(int i = 0; i < someMatrix.length; i++){
      System.out.println(i + ": " +someMatrix[i].length);
    }
  }
}