Several questions about this program

[Stephen Herkins]

I have to create a program that outputs employee data. I read data from files, and I have to use these classes. I have not finished the output section yet, so I left it out for now.

I was wondering why I only get an [incompatible type] error for my accessor method in the grossPay class, when the accessor methods in the other two classes have nothing in them. Shouldn't they get some error?
Can anyone explain to me how to return these arrays correctly?

I was also wondering if I should put the write method in my main class, and if I initialized the arrays outside of the constructors correctly.
If there is anything incorrect with this code, please tell me what I should consider changing.
Thanks for any help you can give me.

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class PayCheck
{
  public static void main (String[] args)
  {
    //outputs
  }
}

class ReadData
{
//input from different file
  private String names [];
  private double payRate [];
  private double hours [];
  
  ReadData(String[] names, double [] payRate, double [] hours) throws IOException
  {
    names = new String [4];
    payRate = new double [4];
    hours = new double [4];
    readFile(names, payRate, hours);
  }
  
  public static void readFile(String names [], double payRate [], double hours []) throws IOException
  {
    File nameRead = new File ("names.txt");//read from text file
    Scanner inName = new Scanner (nameRead);
    
    File hourRead = new File ("hours.txt");
    Scanner inHours = new Scanner (hourRead);
    
    File payRead = new File ("payrates.txt");
    Scanner inPays = new Scanner (payRead);
    
    while (inName.hasNextLine())
    {
      for (int i = 0; i < names.length; i++)
      {
        names [i] = inName.nextLine();
      }
    }
    while (inPays.hasNextLine())
    {
      for (int j = 0; j< payRate.length; j++)
      {
        payRate [j] = Double.parseDouble(inPays.nextLine());
      }
    }
    while (inHours.hasNextLine())
    {
      for (int k = 0; k< hours.length; k++)
      {
        hours [k] = Double.parseDouble(inHours.nextLine());
      }
    }
  }
}//end class

//put this in main?
class WriteNet
{
  private double netPays[];
  private double netTotal = 0.0;
  private String names[];
  WriteNet(double [] netPays, String [] names, double netT) throws IOException
  {
    this.netPays = netPays;
    this.names = names;
    netTotal = netT;
    calcTotal(netPays);
    writeFile(netPays, names, netTotal);
  }
  
  private double calcTotal(double netPays[])
  {
    for (int c = 0; c< netPays.length; c++)
    {
      netTotal += netPays[c];
    }
    return netTotal;
  }
  public static void writeFile(double netPays[], String names [], double netTotal) throws IOException
  {
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter (new FileWriter("Netpays.txt"));
    out.println("Netpays");
    for (int x =0; x< netPays.length; x++)
    {
      out.println(names [x] + " " + netPays[x]);//write each employee's net pay
    }
    out.println("Total NetPay: " + netTotal);
    out.close();
  }//end write method
  
}//end class

class GrossPay
{
  private double hours [];
  private double payRate [];
  private double grossPays [];
  
  GrossPay (double [] hours, double [] payRate, double [] grossPays)
  {
    this.hours = hours;
    this.payRate = payRate;
    grossPays = new double [4];
    gross (hours, payRate, grossPays);
  }
  
  private void gross (double hours [], double payRate [], double grossPays [])
  {  
    for (int x = 0; x <grossPays.length; x++)
    {
      grossPays[x] = hours [x] * payRate [x];
      Math.round(grossPays[x]);
    }
  }
  
  double getGross ()
  {
    //how to return?
    return grossPays;
  }
}//end gross class

class EmployeeTax //individual employee
{
  private double fedTax = 0.17;
  private double provTax = 0.14;
  private double grossPays [];
  private double empTaxes[];
  private double proTax[];
  private double feTax[];
  
  EmployeeTax (double fTax, double pTax, double [] grossPays, double [] empTaxes, double [] proTax, double []feTax)
  {
    fedTax = fTax;
    provTax = pTax;
    this.grossPays = grossPays;
    this.empTaxes = empTaxes;
    this.proTax = proTax;
    this.feTax = feTax;
    tax (grossPays, empTaxes, proTax, feTax, fedTax, provTax);
  }
  
  private void tax (double grossPays [], double empTaxes[], double [] proTax, double [] feTax, double fedTax, double provTax)
  {
    for (int y = 0; y < empTaxes.length; y++)
    {
      double pTax = grossPays[y] * provTax;
      double fTax = grossPays[y] * fedTax;
      double taxDeduct = pTax + fTax;
      empTaxes [y] = Math.round(taxDeduct); //total
      proTax[y] = Math.round(pTax); //provincial tax
      feTax[y] = Math.round(fTax); //federal tax
    }
  }
  
  double getTax()
  {
    return;
  }
  
}//end tax class


class EmployeeNet
{
  private double grossPays[]; 
  private double empTaxes[];
  private double netPays[];
  
  EmployeeNet (double [] grossPays, double [] empTaxes, double [] netPays)
  {
    this.grossPays = grossPays;
    this.empTaxes = empTaxes;
    this.netPays = netPays;
    net(grossPays, empTaxes, netPays);
  }
  
  private void net(double grossPays [], double empTaxes [], double netPays [])
  {
    for (int z = 0; z < 4; z++)
    {
      netPays [z] = grossPays[z] - empTaxes[z];
    }
  }
  
  double getNet()
  {
    //
  }
}//end net 

[Steve Fahlbusch]

A couple of points......

If you are receiving an error -- post it, not your interpration of it, but the exact error (copy and paste it in the posting).

Now I took a few seconds to look at your code..you may not want double fields for holding money (currency) values.

[Greg Brannon]

What is grossPays; what is its type? Are you returning that same type from your accessor that tries to return grossPays?

[Stephen Herkins]

I know that there are other variable types that would be better for handling currency, but I have to use doubles. I'm not all that familiar with the others.

Here's the error, I now know my method should have included "[]" after double:
Error: (line number of the return statement in getGross here): incompatible types
found: double[]
required: double

I didn't include the exact line number because I am going to change this code.
Thanks for your help.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

The type of error you are suffering suggests you are trying to return numbers instead of numbers[i].

Have you been told you use all those arrays? That is hardly good design. You ought to have Employee objects which record hours worked, wage rates, etc. Put those objects into an Employee[] array

[Campbell Ritchie]

By the way, in a for loop to traverse an array, you should always use i < myArray.length; as its middle term. Introducing numbers (eg 4) make it error-prone. What will happen if you pass arrays with 3 or 5 members? And passing arrays of numbers rather than an Employee[] array is error-prone. What if the arrays aren't all the same size?