Arraylist.toString (need to count amount of a specific character in a list)

Question

hi
I have a sql query that im using to populate a ArrayList<String>. I need to count the amount of "+" symbols in the all of the list. My first idea was to use Arraylist.toString and then run the resulting string through this method
public static int countMsgs(String result){
          int counter = 0;
          for(int i=0;i<result.length();i++)
                    if(result.charAt(i)=='+')
                    counter++;                                      
          return counter;However when I do this:
ResultSet userid1021result = sql.executeQuery
      ("select address from MESSAGES where SENT_TIME >=  '" + start + " 00:00:00' AND SENT_TIME <= '"+ end + " 23:59:59' "
      + "and USER_ID = 1");
      while (userid1021result.next()) {
              String addresses = userid1021result.getString("address");
              userid1021.add(addresses);
      String blah = userid1021result.toString();
      System.out.println(blah);It outputs "com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4ResultSet@1abc7b9" which is obviously not what i was expecting
How do i get the contents of the arraylist into one big string so I can run it through my countMsgs method?
Thanks

Answer 1

Guys,
Where a, b, and c are strings: plusesIn(a) + plusesIn(b) + plusesIn(c) == plusesIn(a+b+c)
Ergo, concatenating the strings is just a waste of time.
Also... I'd factor out the character-to-find from countMsgs to make a static helper method (in a "reusable" StringUtils class)...
* Returns the number of times target occurs in string
public static final int occurences(String string, char target) {
  int count = 0;
  for ( char c : s.toCharArray() ) { // 1.6 only
    if( c == target ) count++;
  return target;
}