A Map and ArrayList problem

Question

Hi all,
I have a TreeMap that has a string as a key and an ArrayList of Integers as a value. What I'd like to do is get each of the ArrayLists, then determine for each ArrayList where the first nonzero entry is. Once I do that, I want to lump them together, so all the arrayLists with a similar first nonzero value are together. I've been working on it, and I've got my solution partially working, but at the moment for the rest I'm stumped. Here's my code, can anyone help me out?
Thanks,
Jezzica85
// "chapters" is the number of indices in the ArrayList value of FrequencyTable, minus one (the last is a sum).
// ex. one entry of the frequencyTable is:
//     example=[0, 1, 2, 4, 7], the last index is the sum of all the others
public void getStartingPoints( int chapters ) {
     // frequencyTable = TreeMap<String, ArrayList<Integer>>
     // This has been fully created by the time this method is called.
     // In this example, "chapters" would be 4
     for( int i = 0; i < chapters; i++ ) {
          TreeSet<String> newWords = new TreeSet<String>();
          Iterator iterator = frequencyTable.entrySet().iterator();
          while( iterator.hasNext() ) {
               (Map.Entry) current = (Map.Entry)iterator.next();
               String key = (String)current.getKey();
               ArrayList<Integer> value = (ArrayList<Integer>)current.getValue();
               // If we're dealing with the first index in the arrayList -- this part works.
               if( i == 0 && value.get( 0 ) > 0 ) {
                    newWords.add( key );
               // If we're dealing with any other index -- this doesn't work.
               // What I want to do is see if all the indices from 0 to i - 1 add up to 0.
               if( i > 0 ) {
                    int sum = 0;
                    for( int j = 0; j < i; j++ ) {
                         sum = sum + value.get( j );
                    if( sum == 0 ) {
                         newWords.add( key );
               

Answer 1

Read, re-read, then re-read your post. Couldn't understand it.
Please explain more:
1- You have:frequencyTable = TreeMap<String, ArrayList<Integer>>That seems to be your input structure, right?
So what is supposed to be your resulting structure?
A big ArrayList that will hold all integers?
A big Set that will hold whatever?
Else?
2- The other input seems to be an int named chapters.
What is the relation between this number and the frequencyTable structure?
3- In that frequencyTable the ArrayLists contain integers.
Are those integers the indices you are referring?
Are those integers allways sorted in your ArrayLists?
Are there allways at least one zero integer in your ArrayLists?