you'd think this'd work but....

[Richard Shelly]

it doesnt! (is anyone really surprised!?)

heres the deal, i have a class, with a integer variable called ticketCount.
ticketCount is in a loop to read from a file, and increment, thus counting the number of tickets. strangely, it seems this increment never happens. despite every other command in the loop working. (and no, its not commented out!)

[Martin Simons]

Post your code. You are probably, in some way or another, short circuting
your loop (looping back to the top) before you ever get to your counter.
Or your counter is inside of an if/switch/whatever statement that never
gets accessed. But incrementing a variable inside of a loop definately
does work.

[Ilja Preuss]

Let me guess, you are using

counter = counter++;

If so, take a very close look at how the post increment operator works.

[Christophe Verré]

Nice guess Ilja
I could guess some very strange things too, but prefer to wait for Richard to post his loop.

[Richard Shelly]

public class TicketArray {
private Ticket[] tickets;
private int ticketCount;
public TicketArray(String inFile) throws IOException
{
BufferedReader in = null;
//try catch block to catch file not found exceptions
try
{
in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inFile));
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
System.out.println("Input File could not be read!");
System.exit(1);
}
//ticketCount = 0;
Ticket[] tickets = fileRead(in);
}
private Ticket[] fileRead(BufferedReader in) throws IOException
{
Ticket[] tickets = new Ticket[10];
String line;
int tickNo = 0;
int pos = 0;
int[] numbers = new int[6];
String location = null;
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null)//loop to read tickets, and put into array of tickets
{
//System.out.println("current line: " + line);
StringTokenizer tLine = new StringTokenizer(line, ";");
//string tokeniser for int ticket number
tickNo = Integer.parseInt(tLine.nextToken());
//string tokeniser for numbers, then a string tokeniser to break up the integers.
String sNumbers = tLine.nextToken();
StringTokenizer nLine = new StringTokenizer(sNumbers, " ");
for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
numbers[i] = Integer.parseInt(nLine.nextToken());
}
//string tokeniser for location
location = tLine.nextToken();
//create ticket object, and put into pos in ticket array
tickets[pos] = new Ticket(tickNo, numbers, location);
ticketCount++;
if(pos == tickets.length)
{
tickets = doubleArray(tickets);
}
pos++;
}
return tickets;
}
private Ticket[] doubleArray(Ticket[] tickets)
{
Ticket[] newTickets = new Ticket[2*tickets.length];
for(int i=0; i < tickets.length; i++)
{
newTickets[i] = tickets[i];
}
return newTickets;
}

Ticket is simply a class that holds an int(ticket number), an int array(the lottery numbers), and a string(suburb in which it was bought).

[Richard Shelly]

its cool!! it works now!! booyah!!

[Christophe Verré]

That's cool. That would also be cool to tell us where your blunder is

[Richard Shelly]

well, clearly, i redefined tickets in the constructor (possibly me just assuming Eclipse is smarter than me.