Hashmap's empty

Question

Hi dudes
I start at the beginning^^
I'm quite new in java and I have to write an application as a practice in java, which analyses txt files in a lot of zip files about their DayLightSaving handling (^^) . There are 4 types of txt files ... (ceva.txt / ice.txt / ...) and I have for each type a seperate button/method... I have a method which goes through all Zip Files and reads out the txt files and store them in a Vector of ZipEntries and returns it.
an other class (the GUI class) will get this information for editing... So if i want to reaccess these txt files I have to create a new stream for the zip files because the zipentries don't know from which file it comes^^ .
So for this I made a HashMap with the entries <ZipEntry, String (pathOfZipFile)>
this map will be filled when the application reads out the zip files at the first time. The hashmap fill in works ( saw it in debug mode ) but as soon as the process stops and the GUI will be visible again the Hashmap is lost.
Does anybody know why this happens or another/better way to do what I want to do?
I hope u can understand what I wrote^^

Answer 1

By the way, am I missing something with the pairs of carets (^^) all over the >place? Is this a new lingo the kids are using nowadays? :)I use this as an emoticon :) but you can ignore it anyway
I hope this part is useful , thank you for the quick response
     private HashMap<ZipEntry, String> hashmapEntryZip; //declaration of the Hashmap
     public AnalyserCore()
          mainZipDir = new File(AnalyserGUI.ZIP_DIR);
          zipFileList = mainZipDir.listFiles();          
          hashmapEntryZip = new HashMap<ZipEntry, String>();
        /** Method which reads out the zips and stores the txt's in the vector and hashmap*/
     public Vector<ZipEntry> analyzeData(String mode)
          //StringBuffer tempBuffer = new StringBuffer();     //AnalyseArea Output         // buffered buffer^^ for temporarly saving the data ...
          //StringBuffer textBuffer = new StringBuffer();     //temp File Output               //... and write it to this buffer
          Long dateBevor = Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis(); //(start time) for time used statistics
          Vector<ZipEntry> fileArray = new Vector<ZipEntry>();
          ZipEntry entry ;
          fileTemporaryOutput = new File("ch/schann/analyse/" + mode + ".txt");
          try
               fileTemporaryOutput.createNewFile(); //Create the temporary File
               //FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(fileTemporaryOutput);               
               for ( int p = 0; p < zipFileList.length; p++ )
                    String str = new String();
                    str += "\n[ zip ] File: " + (p+1) + "(" + zipFileList[p].getName() + ") ...\n";
                    str += "-------------------------\n";
                    // File reading whithin the Zipfile
                    zipReading = new ZipInputStream(new FileInputStream(zipFileList[p]));
                    entry = zipReading.getNextEntry();
                    int fileIndex = 0;
                    while (entry != null)
                         String filePath = entry.getName();
                         int lastSlashPos = filePath.lastIndexOf("\\");
                         String fileName = filePath.substring(lastSlashPos + 1);
                         String meterReadout = fileName.substring(0, 2);
                         if (meterReadout.equalsIgnoreCase(mode))
                              fileIndex++;
                              fileArray.add(entry);
                              this.hashmapEntryZip.put(entry, zipFileList[p].getAbsolutePath());
                              str += "[ txt ]File " + fileIndex + ":" + filePath + "...\n";
                         entry = zipReading.getNextEntry();
                    str += "[* NO MORE ELEMENTS *]\n";
                    //writer.write(str);
                    //writer.flush();
                    System.out.println(str);
                    zipReading.close();
               Long dateAfter = Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis();//(end time) for time used statistics
               System.out.println("Time Used: " + (dateAfter - dateBevor) + "ms");
          catch(Exception e)
               System.out.println("\n--------------\n" + e.getMessage());
               e.printStackTrace();
          /*catch(FileNotFoundException ex)
               System.out.println("[File Not Found:] " + ex.getMessage());
          catch ( IOException e)
               System.out.println("[IO -ERROR:] " + e.getMessage());
          return fileArray;
     }