Boolean help

Question

I need to design a programme which determines whether you are a taurus or not.
public class taurus1
public static void main (String args [])
boolean taurus;
int month,day;
month=4;
day=6;
if((month == 4) && (day > 20)) taurus = true;
if((month == 5) && (day < 22)) taurus = true;
System.out.println("You are a Taurus");
else{
System.out.println("You are not a Taurus");
1. I cant seem to get it to compile. What have i done as i get the error message "else without if"
2. i have seen other programmes that start by declaring boolean in this case boolean taurus=false; what is the meaning of this?

Answer 1

ZenitD wrote:
2. i have seen other programmes that start by declaring boolean in this case boolean taurus=false; what is the meaning of this?You can do that if the default value is false, and it only gets set to true if certain code paths are followed. However, I prefer to generally leave local variables uninitialized until some action in my code explicitly sets them. That way, if I miss a case in an if/else, for example, the compiler will complain.
boolean x = false;
if (y == 1) {
  x = true;
else if (z ==2 ) {
  x = false;
return x;What if I wanted x = true for anything other than y==1 or z==2? It will be false in that case, but I won't see it until there's unexpected behavior at runtime. That's more difficult to track down. If I had just done boolean x then the compiler would have complained about x not being set, and I would have known I have to go back an look at my cases. The WRONG thing to do in that situation is to just add the = false to the declaration to make the compiler happy. That just turns an easy-to-fix compile-time error into a hard-to-find runtime error.