problems with .next() .nextLine(); Loop

[meeke Hans]

Hello, Im kinda having a problem with the Scanner class. With this part of my program I ultimately want to be able to enter a company name with spaces allowed and enter data numbers. What problem with this code is that during the second loop the Enter the company name will be skipped. Any help would be awsome!

		for (int i = 1; i <= 4; i++) {
			System.out.print("Enter the name of company " + "number " + i
					+ ": ");
			//if i use String companyName = keyboard.nextLine() it will skip the name on the 2nd loop
			//keyboard.next(); will not accept Spaces for name inputs
			String companyName = keyboard.nextLine();
			System.out.println("companyName is-->" + companyName + "<---");
			outputFile.println(companyName);
			System.out
					.print("Enter the rate for Bodily Injury Liability of company "
							+ "number " + i + ": ");
			double rateBodily = keyboard.nextDouble();
			DecimalFormat rateBodily1 = new DecimalFormat("#.##");
			outputFile.println(rateBodily1.format(rateBodily));
			System.out
					.print("Enter the rate for Property Damage Liability of company "
							+ "number " + i + ": ");
			double rateProperty = keyboard.nextDouble();
			DecimalFormat rateProperty1 = new DecimalFormat("#.##");
			outputFile.println(rateProperty1.format(rateBodily));
			System.out
					.print("Enter the rate for Uninsured Drivers Coverage of company "
							+ "number " + i + ": ");
			double rateUninsured = keyboard.nextDouble();
			DecimalFormat rateUninsured1 = new DecimalFormat("#.##");
			outputFile.println(rateUninsured1.format(rateUninsured));
			double totalCost = rateBodily + rateProperty + rateUninsured;
			DecimalFormat totalCost1 = new DecimalFormat("#.##");
			outputFile.println(totalCost1.format(totalCost));
			//Determines the lowest total Coverage and assigns the name of the company to a variable
			if(totalCost < index){
				index = totalCost;
				highest = companyName;
			}
		}

Running the code....
Enter the name of company number 1: Company One
companyName is-->Company One<---
Enter the rate for Bodily Injury Liability of company number 1: 1
Enter the rate for Property Damage Liability of company number 1: 1
Enter the rate for Uninsured Drivers Coverage of company number 1: 1
Enter the name of company number 2: companyName is--><---
Enter the rate for Bodily Injury Liability of company number 2:

it gets skipped.

MIke

[Jesper de Jong]

Welcome to the Ranch!

What probably happens is that the keyboard.nextDouble() call reads a number, but doesn't process the newline (enter) that you type after entering the number. So the next time the loop is iterated, the newline character will be read and the company name will be empty (keyboard.nextLine() reads the unprocessed newline character and interprets this as an empty line).

What you could do is not use keyboard.nextDouble() to read the numbers, but use keyboard.nextLine() to read a complete line, and then parse that into a Double by calling Double.parseDouble() on the line (string) that was read.

[Marco Galea]

hi there i had kind of the same problem when i was doing my assignment and it seems that what Jesper is saying is right. I used to BufferedReader instead of the Scanner class and the problem was solved...
e.g :

import java.io.*;

class TestingRanch
{
	public static void main (String [] args) throws IOException
	{
		InputStreamReader inpRead = new InputStreamReader (System.in);
		BufferedReader BuffRead = new BufferedReader (inpRead);
		String keyboard = BuffRead.readLine();

		System.out.println(keyboard);
	}
}

hope this helps.