Scope problem

Question

here is the function:
public void readVector(File file)
AddressBook addressBook = new AddressBook();
try
String string, token1 ="", token2 ="", token3 ="", token4 ="",
token5 ="", token6 ="";
FileInputStream fis1 = new FileInputStream(file);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
StringTokenizer st;
while((string = in.readLine()) != null )
st = new StringTokenizer(string);
token1 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
token2 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
token3 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
token4 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
token5 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
token6 = (st.hasMoreTokens())?st.nextToken():"";
Contact c = new Contact(token1, token2, token3, token4, token5, token6);
addressBook.addContact(c);
catch(Exception ex)//catch exception and print stacktrace if try fails
ex.printStackTrace();
problem- some how I need to return the addresBook to another class, I can't do this because of a scope problem. Also if a solution is possible how would I call teh function in my other class.
if this function returns an addressbook
the prototype would be:
AddressBook readVector(File file);
how would I call this functino from another class to obtain the addressbok.

Answer 1

I dont know what you mean by scope problem. Maybe you wanna elaborate on that a bit more. However, returning AddressBook should be straightforward. You can actually do it in two slightly different ways.
1. You can define your readVector() method to be static:
public static AddressBook readVector(whatever arguments) {
....your code here...
Assuming you defined this method in class "foo", you can call this method using foo.readVector(arguments). In your calling function, you will probably have something like:
AddressBook addressbk = foo.readVector(arguments);
2. If you dont want to make your readVector() static, you will have to instantiate the class which contains this method. Again assuming class "foo" contains a definition like:
public AddressBook readVector(args) {
....your code...
In your calling method you will do the following:
foo foo_obj = new foo();
AddressBook addrbk = foo_obj.readVector(arguments);
Of course, in either case your foo class has to be visible to the calling method. If your foo class is part of a different package, you will need to import it in the calling class.