HashMap

[ryan1234]

I have a hashmap which currently contains people's names as keys and then has a string arraylist as the values which are the peoples currently owned cars.

For example:

Tom: BMW, Audi
John: Vauxhall
Steve: Audi, Ford

What I want to do is, is print each car's name and how many people have it as an owned car e.g. Audi: 2, BMW: 1

Any ideas of how I would do this?

Thanks.

[KevinWorkman]

How would you do this without a computer? Say you have a filing cabinet with a folder for each person. In that folder is a list of the cars s/he owns. How do you tally up how many people own which type of car?

[ryan1234]

I would search through each folder searching for each car. But how would I do it if I don't know what I'm searching for, cos there would it a wide range of cars in the world.

[KevinWorkman]

Like I said, how would you do it if you had to do it without a computer? A big part of programming is taking apart a task and thinking about how to do it without programming. Write out the steps you'd take with a piece of paper and a pencil, and when you have that, you have an algorithm that can be turned into code.

[ryan1234]

1. Take out each piece of paper containing car name from each folder.
2. Go through each piece of paper and if new type of car found put in new pile.
3. Count pieces of paper in each pile.

Can do 1. but not sure how to do 2. and 3.

[ryan1234]

I've come up with this:

   public static void listCars()
    {
        for (String key : cars.keySet()) {
           for (int x=0; x < (cars.get(key)).size(); x++)
           {
               carsListed.put((cars.get(key)).get(x), +1);
            }
        }
        System.out.println(carsListed.toString());
    }

However when I call it, it doesn't seem to be adding up the amount of cars correctly.

[lannie1980]

hey, just out the blue - what is the +1 for in line 6? That to me appears to be the 1st thing that is messing your code up....

[ryan1234]

I'm not exactly sure what to put there. Basically I want a variable that adds 1 to it everytime a same element is found. For example, if Audi is found twice, the variable should be 2.

[SJF]

                  carsListed.put(cars.get(key).get(x), carsListed.get(cars.get(key).get(x))+1);// This is a hot mess

Is kind of what you're looking for... if you want to confuse EVERYBODY. Not to mention the fact that this will throw a NPE! (No doubt, because you never check if your carsListed.containsKey())

    for (String key : cars.keySet()) {                          // OK this is fine
        for (int x=0; x < (cars.get(key)).size(); x++)      // This is fine too... but we're getting to the point of confusing author ;)
        {
            carsListed.put((cars.get(key)).get(x), +1);   // ..... and.... we've done it.  This is saying put "+1" into the carsListed Map at key [B]cars.get(key).get(x)[/B]  ... so the key for this one is a list item from an arraylist that is in another map...
                                                                        // we're now well past the point of using temporary variables to make this make sense!
                                                                        // String currentKey = cars.get(key).get(x);
                                                                        // if (carsListed.containsKey(currentKey)){ ...........
         }
     }
     System.out.println(carsListed.toString());

[ryan1234]

public static void listCars()
    {
        int amount = 1;
        
        for (String key : cars.keySet()) {
           for (int x=0; x < cars.get(key)).size(); x++)
           {
              if (carsListed.containsKey((cars.get(key)).get(x)))
              {
                  *******
              }
              else
              {
                  carsListed.put((cars.get(key)).get(x), amount);
              }
            }
        }
        System.out.println(carsListed.toString());
      }

Not sure what to put where the *'s are. I want it to add one to the amount of the existing key.

[SJF]

well, you have to get what's already there, and add 1 to it

Integer cVal = carsListed.get(/*STUFF*/) + 1;   // The current count... need to use Integer (instead of int) b/c of object requirement of Map/HashMap... 
                                                                  // though I never saw your HashMap definition for carsListed
carsListed.put(/*STUFF*/, cVal);  // Or something similar