Chapter 11
Using Arrays and Collections to Juggle Values
In This Chapter
Dealing with several values at once
Creating values as you get a program running
Impressing other programmers with fancy generic types
Welcome to the Java Motel! No haughty bellhops, no overpriced room service, none of the usual silly puns. Just a clean double room that’s a darn good value!
Getting Your Ducks All in a Row
The Java Motel, with its ten comfortable rooms, sits in a quiet place off the main highway. Aside from a small, separate office, the motel is just one long row of ground floor rooms. Each room is easily accessible from the spacious front parking lot.
Oddly enough, the motel’s rooms are numbered 0 through 9. I could say that the numbering is a fluke — something to do with the builder’s original design plan. But the truth is that starting with 0 makes the examples in this chapter easier to write.
Anyway, you’re trying to keep track of the number of guests in each room. Because you have ten rooms, you may think about declaring ten variables:
int guestsInRoomNum0, guestsInRoomNum1, guestsInRoomNum2,
guestsInRoomNum3, guestsInRoomNum4, guestsInRoomNum5,
guestsInRoomNum6, guestsInRoomNum7, guestsInRoomNum8, ...
