Reading:

• Chapter 12

This chapter combines coverage of lists and files. There is much that could be said about each of these topics, but the chapter zeroes in on those features most relevant to the course material.

12.2. Lists

• Create a new Java application that declares and initializes an ArrayList of string values designed to store a list of people’s first names.
• Add two or three names to your list.
• Print the elements of your list to the console.
• Write a method that receives an array of strings and returns the length of the longest string. Use this to print the length of the longest name on the console.

If you would like additional practice, get the sample code in this section to run and write compute variance method mentioned but not implemented at the end of Section 12.2.5. As you can deduce from its invocation in the sample code, it should receive an ArrayList and an average value, and should return the standard deviation as specified by the formula in the chapter. Use the computeAverage() as a model.

12.3. Files

Modify your name list application from above to do the following.

• Write the names in your array list to a simple text file.
• Initialize your names list with name from a text file.

If you would like additional practice, get the sample code in this section to run and implement the application left as an exercise to the reader mentioned at the end of Section 12.3.4. Your application should read soldier information from the keyboard and write it to a file using the format stipulated in the chapter. Start with soldier records that don’t include nicknames, then add the nicknames.

When you have that working, consider what it would take to skip blank lines in the file.

12.1 & 4. Revisiting the Example

The final project for this course requires that you implement an application of your choice. Students often implement visual games for this project, so downloading and playing with the character drill application developed in this chapter is a good place to start for ideas. You could change the domain of the drill program, create new hints, implement multiple choice questions, etc.