Calling a certain object

Question

If you have lots of objects created in a class, how can you easilly call a certain object based on the user's input?
All I can think of is an awfully long if-structure. For example:
private Creature xA = new Creature();
private Creature xB = new Creature();
private Creature xC = new Creature();
private Creature xD = new Creature();
private Creature xE = new Creature();
String what = this.textfield.getText();
if (what.equals("a"))
    xA.doSomething();
if (what.equals("b"))
    xB.doSomething();
if (what.equals("c"))
    xC.doSomething();
...and so on...
Is there any shorter way to do this?

Answer 1

You could maybe have an HashMap of Creature objects. Then pick the correct object out based on the letter received from getText(),
e.g. for a HashMap the key could be related to 'a', 'b', 'c', ...
// fill HashMap with entries xA, xB, ... and keys hashCode("a"), ...
// Then ...
if(map.containsKey(what.hashCode())) {  
   (map.get(what.hashCode())).doSomething();
}