Is my return value actually being returned?

Question

When I compile this code, it gives me an error that says it "cannot find symbol" for the variable count. Am I not returning it correctly? Or do I have to declare the variable in the main method, and not in the wordScore method?

import java.util.Scanner;
import java.io.File;
public class assignment3 {
public static void main (String []args){
  Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
  double totalCount = 0;
  //ask user to enter a movie review line
  System.out.println("Please enter a one line movie review ");
  String oneLineMovieReview = input.nextLine();

  //putting each word into a string array
  String[] words = oneLineMovieReview.split(" ");

  //calling the wordScore method to calculate word score for each word
  for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
     wordScore(words[i]);
     totalCount = totalCount + count;
  }                
}
public static double wordScore(String oneLineMovieReview) {
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
  double count = 0;
  double sumScore = 0;
  double average = 0;
  int totalCount = 0;


  File file = new File("movieReviews.txt");

  try {

     Scanner fInput = new Scanner(file);
     while (fInput.hasNextLine()) {
        String line = fInput.nextLine();
        if (line.contains(oneLineMovieReview)){
           count++;
           sumScore += Integer.parseInt(line.substring(0,1));
        } 
     }

    System.out.println("The word " + oneLineMovieReview + " appears " + 
count + " times.");
    average = sumScore / count;
    System.out.println("The average score is " + average);
    System.out.println(totalCount);
    System.out.println();
  } catch(Exception e) { }

  return count;      

  }
}

The declaration of `count` is not visible to the `main` method and you never assign the return value of `wordScore()` to anything. You need to perhaps do `totalCount = totalCount + wordScore(words[i])` (or even just `double count = wordScore(words[i])`) — Tibrogargan, Apr 24 '17 at 17:23

score -1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 24 '17 at 17:25

Here, you do

for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
   wordScore(words[i]);
   totalCount = totalCount + count;
}

Now, count isn't visible here as it was declared in the wordScore method. I suppose you intended doing

for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
   totalCount = totalCount + wordScore(words[i]);
}

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 24 '17 at 17:29

Both main and woreScore are static methods, meaning they share no state except for members of the class which are also static. The main method needs its own count variable, keeping in mind this will be separate from the one in any other function. For main and wordScore to share the same value of count, the variable will have to either be static, or the functions extracted into a separate class and made non-static.

(Also, it's often best to keep the class which has the main entry point separate from the class doing your program's actual work).

Is my return value actually being returned?

2 Answers2