ArrayList problem

Question

Well, im new to ArrayList and im having great trouble trying to figure things out,
this is what im supposed to do:
The Problem
A banking institution offers certificates of deposit (CD's) with a variety of interest rates, and maturities of 1, 3, 5, and 10 years. Interest is always compounded, daily, monthly, or quarterly.
Write a Java program that will compute the accumulated value (principal plus interest earned), at yearly intervals, of any number of such CD's. Assume that a year always consists of exactly 365 days.
Output will be a series of 10 annual reports:
Reports will be in table form with appropriate column headings. There will be one row of the table for each active CD, which will include all the data along with the accumulated value and total interest earned to data.
Each report will also print the total interest earned by all CDs for the current year, and total interest earned by all active CD�s to data.
Once a CD reaches maturity, it will stop earning interest and will not appear in any future reports. E.g., a CD with a maturity of 5 years will appear in the reports for years one through five, but not thereafter.
The CD Class
Begin by creating a class to model a CD. Each CD object "knows" its own principal, interest rate, maturity, and compounding mode (private instance variables). The class has �get� methods to return this data and a method to compute and return the accumulated value.
The CDList Class
Now create a class to maintain a list of CDs. You will need methods to add a CD to the list and to print the annual report.
The Driver (i.e., "Test") Class
Your test class or "driver" class will read data for any number of CDs from a file that I will supply. Each line of the file will contain the data � principal, interest rate (as an annual per cent), maturity, and compounding mode � for one CD.
First, tokenize each line read, create a CD object from the tokens, and add it to the list. Then print the reports.
Additional Specifications
Your CDList class must use an ArrayList as the principal (no pun intended) data structure.
Your test class is to read the data file one time only. No credit will be given for programs that read the data file more than once.
Make sure your program is well documented and adheres to the style conventions discussed in class.
Due date:          Thursday, April 20th
Formula
The accumulated value (i.e., principal plus interest), A, is given by the formula:
                                             r nt
               A = p ( 1 + ���� )
                                             n
               where
p = principal
n = number of times compounded per year
r = annual interest rate, expressed as a decimal
t = elapsed time in years
now, im supposed to read data from a file, and whats inside the file is:
5000 5 8.25 quarterly
12000 10 10.80 daily
2000 5 7.30 quarterly
10000 3 5.55 monthly
2000 1 4.50 daily
5000 10 9.15 monthly
now, im totally lost, however, ive managed to do this so far:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
class CD
     private String time;     
     private double cdAmount;
     private int cdMonths;
     private double cdInterest;
     public CD(String time, double cdAmount, int cdMonths, double cdInterest)
          this.time = time;
          this.cdAmount = cdAmount;
          this.cdMonths = cdMonths;
          this.cdInterest = cdInterest;     
     public String getTime()
          return time;
     public double CDAmount()
          return cdAmount;
     public int CDMonths()
          return cdMonths;
     public double CDInterest()
          return cdInterest;
class CDlist
     private ArrayList<CD> list;
     public CDlist()
          list = new ArrayList<CD>();
     public void addList(CD info)
          list.add(info);
     }Please any help regarding this subject will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Ok, lets take this step by step,
it says that in the cd class im supposed to have:
Each CD object "knows" its own principal, interest rate, maturity, and compounding mode (private instance variables)"
1. i have 4 variables, am i missing something in the CD class?
2. the cdlist class is supposed to have this:
"Now create a class to maintain a list of CDs. You will need methods to add a CD to the list and to print the annual report."
i have created an empty list, do i need to add the 4 variables into the list ive created??
3. the test class says this:
"Your test class or "driver" class will read data for any number of CDs from a file that I will supply. Each line of the file will contain the data � principal, interest rate (as an annual per cent), maturity, and compounding mode � for one CD.
First, tokenize each line read, create a CD object from the tokens, and add it to the list. Then print the reports."
well i dont know how to do this, but ill try not to worry about this now