boolean comparisons

Hi
I tried a line of code to compare a boolean value

and the loops I was using for comparisons would not work. I later tried

and it worked
we use Bluej at college and I can't see why but is this in conflict in some way ?
would appreciate any comments
kelly

[ January 24, 2004: Message edited by: Marilyn de Queiroz ]
[ January 25, 2004: Message edited by: kelly ball ]

You might want to post a little bit more code here in order for us to help, cause i don't see any reason at all why it should not work.

Are you sure that you didn't type

if (x = true)

by mistake?

For that matter, you could also just use
if (x)
As for the original question, see if you can replicate the problem, and post the exact code that demonstrates it. Otherwise I think Marilyn has the right idea about what happened.

hi - thanks for your help on this so far
a mis-type " = " for " == ", would be a very simple explanation, but I don't think I did
have reviewed an earlier example I was working on and this is a little more of the code to put it in context

public void testName(Member member){
    boolean nameExists = false;     // boolean set to false i.e. name is not in list
    String testName = member.getName();  
    int numberShown = 0;            // var for while loop control
    while (numberShown < members.size())    // while loop starts
        {
             Member currentMember = (Member) members.get(numberShown);  //get objects
        // System.out.println("numberShown = " + numberShown); debug line
           String name = currentMember.getName();     // get name out
             // System.out.println("Name = " + name ); debug
             // System.out.println("testName = " + testName ); debug 
             numberShown++;                             // increment thro' list
                if (testName.equalsIgnoreCase(name))    // compare names
                {
                nameExists = true;      // sets boolean val to true if name exists
                break;                  // stop here in if branch
                }
                    if (nameExists == true) // if stoppped at line 55 should route this way
                    System.out.println("Sorry, that name is in use"); // name exists
                    else                    // if name not in list this way
                    members.add(member);    // add to list
                    }
          }

here I was using " nameExists " and it is clearly " = = "
this line when changed to

and it worked [I still had a problem with the loops testing but at least I got the conditional 'if' statement working
regards kelly
thanks for your efforts, but I am still baffled

just reviewing this post - the line about 3 above the 'if test' - is this causing my problem? kelly
[ January 25, 2004: Message edited by: kelly ball ]

i'm also baffled with regard to this mystery....One question though, why do you have a break statement in your if-condition??? Adds complexity to the code!
since if(nameExists!=false) works, its value is being changed to something else...(probably null)
[ January 25, 2004: Message edited by: Ram Mohan ]

If you change "nameExists != false" back to "nameExists == true" does the problem recur? If not, perhaps something else was going on, like maybe the program wasn't compiled correctly and you were executing an old class file which did not correspond to the latest .java file you were looking at?
As for the break, well this is exactly the sort of situation where I probably would use a break as shown - but with a better comment. I can't tell what "stop here in branch" means. How about "// found name, so exit while loop"? But for the question about a break in a while loop, different people have different opinions on this. I'd say if you do it, it's important that the surrounding code be as clear as possible, since some people who read your code will automatically regard the break as "complex".
Actually the biggest problem I see with this code is that the indentation is horrible. Need to be able to see the loop structure clearly, and there is never any reason for tolerating bad indentation in code. Making your program readable will make all other taks easier.