Newbie String Question

Question

* @(#)NumberBox.java 1.0 03/11/03
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.applet.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.util.*;
public class NumberBox extends JApplet
                         implements ActionListener{
     JButton medianButton;
     JButton avgHighLowButton;     
     JTextField inputNumbers;
     ArrayList userInput;
     public void init() {
          Container c = getContentPane();
          inputNumbers = new JTextField(100);
          avgHighLowButton = new JButton ("List Details");
          medianButton = new JButton("Get Median");
          userInput = new ArrayList();
          c.add(avgHighLowButton);
          c.add(medianButton);
          c.add(inputNumbers);          
          getContentPane().setLayout(null);
          inputNumbers.setBounds(150,50,300,30);
          avgHighLowButton.setBounds(390,260,100,30);
          avgHighLowButton.addActionListener(this);
          avgHighLowButton.setActionCommand("avg");
          medianButton.setBounds(10,260,100,30);
          medianButton.addActionListener(this);
          medianButton.setActionCommand("median");
     public void actionPerformed (ActionEvent e){
     if ("median".equals(e.getActionCommand()))
System.out.println("median pressed");
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The Median of this Set is: \n");
else
          System.out.println("avg pressed");
          JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The Average of this Set is: \nThe Highest Number is: \nThe Lowest Number is: \n");
     public void ActionPerformed (ActionEvent e){
     //String = string;
          JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null,inputNumbers.getText());
          //string = " " + inputNumbers;
          //System.out.println("User Input"+ string);
basically i want the user to type in a comma seperated list of numbers into a JtextField and tokenise this for manipulation. what i don't really know (and can't seem to find a simple answer too) is how to convert this input text into a String in the first place. either my basic understanding of the language is skewed (very likely) or i'm missing something very simple (also very likely).
any suggestions, other than STFW. java.sun/google is good and all but as stated i can't seem to find a simple answer.

Answer 1

yeah, but my problem is that i don't know how to do
any sort of manipulation. say i wanted to trim the
string, String inputNumbers = inputNumbers.trim()
doesn't work. what i actually want to know is how to
access the string.
If you look at the API documentation for JTextField, you will see that JTextField inherits the method getText() from JTextComponent. getText() returns a String representation of the characters entered in the JTextComponent.String inputstring = inputNumbers.getText(); //get text into a String
inputstring = inputstring.trim(); //for example