ArrayList and wrappers

Question

Can an ArrayList contain different types of objects from the same class?
I know that it must be an object but can one be of type String and another be of type int?
I am reading information from a file that looks something like this:
Sam
Jones
21
Tim
Hendricks
15
I have written the following method:
ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
String fname;
try
  BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("student.txt"));
  while ((fname = br.readLine()) != null)
         String lname=br.readLine();
     int age= br.readLine();
     br.readLine(); //FOR THE BLANK LINE
     list.add(new Student(fname, lname, age));
  br.close();
catch(IOException e)
  System.err.println(e.getMessage());
  System.exit(0);
}If I declare age as type String the method and other methods work great, but I need to make it of type int.
I have read up about wrappers and I think that is what I am suppose to use for the int but no matter what I do, I get tonnes of error messages.
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

A better way would be to build a class for your data packet.
class Thing {
  public final String name;
  public final int age;
  public Thing(String name, int age) {
    this.name = name;
    this.age = age;
public class SomeClass {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    List list = new ArrayList();
    list.add(new Thing("Jill",10));
    list.add(new Thing("John",20));
    list.add(new Thing("Janet",30));
    list.add(new Thing("Jeremy",40));
}Then you can simply get your values back with
for(Iterator iterator = list.iterator(); iterator.hasNext(); ) {
  Thing thing = (Thing) iterator.next();
  System.out.println("Name: "+thing.name);
  System.out.println("Age: "+thing.age);
}Or something like that...
Talden