Adding a Value to an Arraylist of String arrays.

[Problemer]

Hello ,

i have made a try catch statement so the program wont crash if an index is empty when it tries to access it.
What i then want to do if there is a "catch", is to set that index with a value of my choice. So when later on it
is used in the program, it is atlest " ".

 try {
       special1 = bookInfoSplitList.get(0)[7];
	} catch (Exception e) {
        special1 = " ";
        bookInfoSplitList.add(0)[7] = special1;
        
        }

and then the error message

./Books.java:79: cannot find symbol
symbol  : method add(int)
location: class java.util.ArrayList<java.lang.String[]>
bookInfoSplitList.add(0)[7] = special1;

Best Regards
P

[KevinWorkman]

You have an ArrayList of Strings. You're trying to add a single int to that ArrayList, and then for some reason you're trying to use an array index on that. None of that makes much sense. What exactly are you trying to do here?

[Problemer]

Sorry the variables are not delcared in the code here.

But we are not talking INT , its strings.

The arraylist is an arraylist where every index contains an array of strings. (arraylist)[stringarrays] , if for example position (0)[1] is empty when trying to write to a file the program will crash.

Thats why i am trying to check if there is an value in it before , if not write something to it.

[sehudson]

With line 2, you are assigning special1 the value of the item at index 7 in the array at position 0 in bookInfoSplitList.

Assuming that you want to change the value of the item at index 7 in the array at position 0, you could create a String[] variable,
and set it's value to be the String[] at position 0 in bookInfoSplitList.

Once you have the String[], you can set the value at index 7 to be whatever you want it to be (looks like you want a single space).
Then you would simply set the value at index 0 of bookInfoSplitList to be equal to your new String[], essentially overriding what was there.

[KevinWorkman]

But we are not talking INT , its strings.

That's exactly my point. You need to add *arrays* of Strings to the ArrayList. But here you're adding a single int:

bookInfoSplitList.add(0)

[Problemer]

Aight i will look through that later on.
Thanks for the advice!