Help? Beginning Student--error msgs

Question

Hi, I'm a college student taking Java with the 3rd edition Deitel and Deitel Text.
In Chapter 5, problem 5.11 is killing me.
I've tried moving things around, and it just changes the error messages from "type expected" to "variable may not have been initialized."
Here is the current version, with the "variable may not have been initialized" error message. Please help me?
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class Applet511 extends JApplet {
int n = 0, r, d = 1;
public void init () {
     String input;
for (r = 1; r <= 5; r++ )
     //read in number from user as a string
input = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(
     "Enter a number between 1 and 30: " );
     //convert number from type String to type Int
n = Integer.parseInt ( input );
     public void paint ( Graphics star ) {
     while ( d <= n ) {
          star.drawString ( "*", 50, 50 );
          d++; }
The error message says:
Applet511.java:19: Variable input may not have been initialized.
n = Integer.parseInt ( input );
^
1 error
Thank you!
Robin

Answer 1

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class BallB extends JApplet {
int n = 0, r, d = 1;
public void init () {
String input;
for (r = 1; r <= 5; r++ ){
//read in number from user as a string
input = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(
"Enter a number between 1 and 30: " );
//convert number from type String to type Int
n = Integer.parseInt ( input );
System.out.println(n);
public void paint ( Graphics star ) {
while ( d <= n ) {
star.drawString ( "*", 50, 50 );
d++; }
}u have misplaced your { } braces, and you have
declared paint method inside init() method, which you
cannot do
hope the above code helpsActually paint is not in init. It's just looks strange since the program gets a String five times using JOptionPane but only uses that last one. So the for loop may need { } so that n may be assigned the String each time also, but paint is only going to use the last assigned value of n, anyways...
Here's the original init:
public void init ()
  String input;
  for (r = 1; r <= 5; r++ )
    //read in number from user as a string
    input = JOptionPane.showInputDialog( "Enter a number between 1 and 30: " );
  //convert number from type String to type Int
  n = Integer.parseInt ( input );  // this was not in for loop