Arrays of arrays.......

[Joel Cochran]

I have a program with two methods, main and a JDBC connection method. I want the connection method to return an array of arrays to main. They are defined as such:

    public static String[][] TestCon()
    {
    String clientInfo[][] ;
  // do stuff to populate clientInfo[][]
    return clientInfo[][] ;
    }
    public static void main( String args[] )
    {
  // do other stuff...
        String clientData[][] = TestCon();
  // do more stuff...
    }

When I compile, I get the following 2 errors:

return clientInfo[][];
                  ^
"Array subscript expression missing"
public static void main( String args[] )
              ^
"Not expecting variable declaration here"

Is there a problem passing around arrays? Is there some reason my method cannot return an array of arrays? And why does the main statement think I'm trying to declare a variable?
Really
------------------
I'm a soldier in the NetScape Wars...
Joel

[qionghua yang]

Hi joel,
Try replacing "return clientInfo[][];" with
"return clientInfo; "
Hope this helps.
qionghua

[Joel Cochran]

Originally posted by qionghua yang:
Hi joel,
Try replacing "return clientInfo[][];" with
"return clientInfo; "
Hope this helps.
qionghua

Thanks qionghua, that helped. I had to take an extra step though because the compiler did not like

    String clientInfo[][] ;

because it said it was never initialized, so I had to replace it with

    String clientInfo[][] = new String[ 10 ][ 2 ] ;

and it compiled fine. My problem is that I never know how many elements the array is going to have, so I don't like hard coding the '10'. Is there a way to make the array size variable?
Thanks
------------------
I'm a soldier in the NetScape Wars...
Joel

[Cindy Glass]

No, if you need a variable like that try Vector or ArrayList. Of course you would need an ArrayList full of ArrayLists if both need to be variable.

[Joel Cochran]

hhmmmm... The layout is clientInfo[ row# ][ column# ]. I always know how many columns there are (specified in my SQL statement) so [ column# ] would be constant, I'm just not sure how many [ row# ] will be returned by the SQL statement.
I haven't used either vectors or ArrayList before, so which would you recommend I look into first?
------------------
I'm a soldier in the NetScape Wars...
Joel

[Cindy Glass]

Unless you need it to be synchronized, use ArrayList.

[qionghua yang]

Yet, I agree with Cindy. I have used ArrayList before and I think it is very nice. You can get those nice methods like the size(), get(i), etc.
qionghua