Re: noob question about boolean methods

From:
Lew <lew@lewscanon.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:14:05 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<0f406818-4986-4059-91bb-357cac540bfb@z1g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
justineee wrote:

public boolean contains()
{
  boolean x=false;

  if (list.contains("sales")==true
      && list.contains("cost of goods sold")==true)
  {
     x=true;
     return x;
  }
  return x;
}


My goodness, what an obfuscation! You don't need to compare a
'boolean' value to 'true' or 'false'; you can just use it directly.

 public boolean contains()
 {
   return list.contains( "sales" )
       && list.contains( "cost of goods sold" );
 }

With an expression that short, one wonders if wrapping it in a method
hides too much. So the client code could avoid the intermediate call
to 'contains()' altogether and just use the expression, so

  if ( contains() )

becomes

  if ( list.contains( "sales" )
       && list.contains( "cost of goods sold" ))

--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth


Please do not quote sigs.

I transfer the words from initlist.txt to the ArrayList using
FileReader.. Will this make any difference? Because when I show the
words they are all correct but not in the boolean method..


<http://sscce.org>

Come on, you've been around long enough to know that, absent an SSCCE,
the error is always in the code you don't show.

--
Lew

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