Comp Sci Need Help Solving Java "Method Must Return a Result of Type Int" Error

[Cowtipper]

This is really making me mad. I keep getting a "this method must return a result of type int" error message, but obviously I have a return statement trying to return an int. This is a program that is supposed to perform a sequential search for a string index.



public static int nameSearch(String[] inOrder, String searchedFor)
{
for (int i = 0; i < inOrder.length; i++)
{
if (searchedFor == inOrder)
{
return i;
}
else if (i > inOrder.length)
{
return -1;
}
}
}
Does anybody know what is wrong?

 

[exk]

Your else if condition can't occur.

The loop only runs while i < inOrder.legth and you are checking for i to be greater than your loop limit. If it doesn't find your search parameter it will return something that is not int and that's why you get the error.

Something like this might work better:

public static int nameSearch(String[] inOrder, String searchedFor)
{
for (int i = 0; i < inOrder.length; i++)
{
if (searchedFor == inOrder) break;
if (i == inOrder.length - 1) i = -1;
}
return i;
}