"Illegal start of expression", What does this mean?

[JavaDog97]

Hey guys,

I was writing code for my Hello World HTML Applet and when I compiled it in my cmd, it gave me the errors...

HelloWorld.java:8: error: illegal start of expression

private Font a_Font

HelloWorld.java:11: error: illegal start of expression

public void init()

HelloWorld.java:11: error: illegal start of expression

public void init()

HelloWorld.java:11: error: illegal start of expression

public void ()

import java.applet.*;
import java.awt.*;

    public class HelloWorld extends Applet
    {
        public void paint (Graphics g)
        {
            private Font a_Font;
            g.setColor (Color.blue);
            
            public void init()
            {   
                a_Font = new Font("Helvetica", Font.BOLD, 48);
                setFont(a_Font);
                setBackground(Color.yellow);
                setForeground(Color.blue);
            }
            
            g.drawString("Hello World", 50, 25);
            
            g.setColor(Color.red);
            g.drawRect (5,8,49,29);
                
            
            
        }
    }

Any interpretations as to what might be the problem? Sorry for the basic problem, not good with errors in java...

[Fubarable]

You've got code either in the wrong place or written incorrectly. Already I see you've got methods nested inside of methods, you're declaring variables as private inside of methods which is illegal....

The biggest mistake I see is that you have more than one of these errors present which mean that you are coding wrong. You need to start with the barest skeleton of code, and first make sure that it compiles. Then when adding code if you're not using an IDE you must compile often, usually after adding each line or two of code, and don't add any new code until the current code compiles well.

[quad64bit]

You can;t declare the scope of a local variable, local variables are just local. Remove the word 'private'. Also you tried to declare the init() method inside the paint method, and you cannot do that!