asked on

Create an array of vectors

Hi everybody,

I'm posting here because I close my previous question (https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21400413/Java-class-inheritance.html) too quick (the answer helped me understanding my mistake, but now I have a logic problem).

I have a class named Dictionnary with a vectors containing a list of words: "protected Vector mots;"

I created a new class in a different file name "Cruciverbist" which is declared like this: "public class Cruciverbiste extends Dictionnaire"

Now what I want to do is:
- First to declare an array that can contains 24 vectors of words.
- Then, make a constructor that receive a filename of a file containing the list of words.
- Finaly, separate the dictionnary' words depending of their length, putting them in different vectors of the vectors' array.

* There should be a vector for each length of word (2 to 25 letters by word) containing every words of this length.

Here's how I started:

public class Cruciverbist extends Dictionnary
{
      // First point. How do you declare an array of vectors ? It needs to have 24 elements, but I don't know how to initialize it with these elements... I need to
declare a new vector and add empty items ?

      // Constructor.
      public Cruciverbist (String filename) throws IOException
      {
// I'd like to create a new Dictionnary with the filename passed in parameter.
// Then I'll have to read each words of the "words" vector and add them in the different vectors of the array.
      }
}

public class Dictionnary
{
      protected Vector words;

      // constructor
      public Dictionnary(String filename) throws IOException
      {
            readWords(filenamer);
            quickSort(words, 0, words.size() - 1);
      }

[...]

I would really appreciate if anyone could help me with this one. Thanks

Frank

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Peter Kwan

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The_Kingpin08

ASKER

Thanks a lot pkwan, that looks perfect.

I still have 2 questions:

- In my Dictionnary's class constructor, I have a method that automatically fills the vector "words" with all the words from the file. Knowing this, does I still need the
getWords function ? Because I'd like to keep the dictionnary class as it is if I can. So while creating a new Dictionnary, I thought that a new "words" would be filled
and ready to used in my new class's constructor... That would give something like this:

// Cruciverbiste constructor
public Cruciverbiste (String nom_fichier) throws IOException
{
       // Initializing the vector's elements
       for (int i = 0; i < 24; i++) arrWords[i] = new Vector();

       Dictionnary d = new Dictionnary (filename);

// Here we consider that the vector "words" was initialized when we created a new instance of Dictionnary
       for (int i =0; i< words.size(); i++)
       {
            String word = (String) words.elementAt(i);
            arrWords[word.length()-2].add(word);
      }
}

- I'm having an error in my constructor's structure, and I think it's my fault since I never pratice inheritance besides in books...

>javac Cruciverbist.java
Cruciverbist.java:20: Dictionnary(java.lang.String) in Dictionnary cannot be applied to ()
      {
^
1 error
>Exit code: 1

And here are the line numbers:
[19]public Cruciverbiste (String nom_fichier) throws IOException
[20]{
[...]

Thanks for your time, I trully appreciate.
Frank

Peter Kwan

You may be not needing this. You can also delete the Dictionnary d = new Dictionnary (filename);
as well.

To solve your problem, you can call

super(filename);

at the beginning of your constructor of Cruciverbist class