Set the name of an array to be the value of a String variable

Question

I am looking to do what I explain below or something similar for a program that I'm writing. Prior to this part of my program I have an array that holds the names of players that are playing the game.

I am wanting to create a for loop that will initialize a new array based around the number of players that there are and name that new array the name of that player.

So you get a better idea:

for (int i = 0; i < nPlayers; i++) {
    String name = playerNames[i];
    int[] name = new int[nCategories];  
}

So you can see that I am attempting to assign a new array based off of the name of something I have stored in a different array. Is there any way to do this? Or something similar, which I suppose might be better/more efficient?

This is a Java program btw.

Thanks!

Your code makes no sense. What are you trying to do? In English. — Bohemian, Feb 27 '13 at 04:45
I can see compilation error. Two variable declared by same identifier e.g String name and int[] name. — Rais Alam, Feb 27 '13 at 04:58

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 04:38

There's not really a clean way to create a variable with a dynamic name like you're trying to do. Perhaps a good option would be to have a Map, and create a new key in the map for each player, with the player's name as the key, and the value as a new Int array.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 27 '13 at 04:45

I want to start about by noting that Ian makes a valid point. If you want to be able to retrieve a variable dynamically using a String a map is a great candidate. Create a map that uses a String for the key and an int[] array as the value. Then you can call the int[] out of the map using your String key.

Map<String, int[]> players = new Map<String, int[]>();
String myname = "myname";
int[] myInts = {0,1,2};
players.put(myname, myInts);
int[] intArrayForPlayer = players.get(myname);

However, the main advantage of using Java is that it is an object oriented language. You may want to strongly consider using classes to achieve your goal. You can create a class called Players with class variables to hold all of the data you'll need for each Player. Then you can create Player myPlayer = new Player(); objects and use them to hold all your information.

You could use an array or ArrayList to hold all of your player objects.

Set the name of an array to be the value of a String variable

2 Answers2