Unable to remove object from arraylist

Question

Hello,
I am trying to remove a few objects from an arraylist and it isnt happeneing in one loop :
                     for(int i=0;i<someList.size();i++){
                         empVo = (EmpVO)colList.get(i);
                         if(empVo.getempName().trim().equalsIgnoreCase("A") ||empVo.getempName().trim().equalsIgnoreCase("B") ||empVo.getempName().trim().equalsIgnoreCase("C") )
                            colList.remove(i);
                     }So, it doesnt remove the object all the time whenever the names of A,B or C appear, so I have to run this loop thrice so it deletes all the data pertaining to these three emp names. Then I thought may be the size of the arraylist is changing and used a temp var for the someList.size, but that doesnt work either. Could you please tell me what is going wrong ?
Edited by: Sarvananda on Sep 3, 2010 12:10 PM
Also, the exact test has names A to F. So say A, D and E will be deleted in the first loop, then I have to specifically sysout and see which ones were deleted and then write another loop for B,C and F. Ofcourse at the end A - F are removed. But why two loops for it

Answer 1

Encephalopathic wrote:
What if you do this using an iterator to remove items, or if you start from the top of the list and iterate down to the first item?thanks for your reply. I was just looking at the API, and stumbled on this :
The iterators returned by this class's iterator and listIterator methods are fail-fast: if the list is structurally modified at any time after the iterator is created, in any way except through the iterator's own remove or add methods, the iterator will throw a ConcurrentModificationException. Thus, in the face of concurrent modification, the iterator fails quickly and cleanly, rather than risking arbitrary, non-deterministic behavior at an undetermined time in the future.Any pointers on where I could look or how I could I move from here ?
Another question I had was, there is no efficient way to 'move' objects in an arraylist (based on their indexes), isn't it ?
I always have to remove and add at a certain index.