switch statement

[charlie mills]

I've created a switch statement and in the second case, i'm getting an error saying that i need to initialised the cities variable. i dont know/understand what to put in case 2 to fix it. cities is the array that i have created from reading data from a text file.
Thanks in advance
case 1:

System.out.println("Cities and temperatures have been read from file");

ArrayList cities = new ArrayList();

Scanner file = new Scanner(new File("CitiesTemps.txt"));

while (file.hasNext())
{
cities.add(file.nextLine());
}

break;

case 2:

for(int i = 0; i < cities.size(); i++)
{
System.out.println(cities.get(i));
}

break;

[fred rosenberger]

case 1:
   System.out.println("Cities and temperatures have been read from file"); 
		
   ArrayList cities = new ArrayList();
		
   Scanner file = new Scanner(new File("CitiesTemps.txt"));
			
   while (file.hasNext())
   {
      cities.add(file.nextLine());
   }
	
   break;
			
case 2:
				
   for(int i = 0; i < cities.size(); i++)
   {
      System.out.println(cities.get(i));
   }
			
   break;

Here's your code cleaned up a little. You declare your cities variable inside the 'case 1' block. If your code goes directly into case 2, you've never initialized your variable, since you'd skip line 4. you can declare it outside the case statement entirely.. something like

 
ArrayList cities = new ArrayList();
 case 1:
   //blah blah blah
 case 2:
  //blah blah blah
 

You still may have problems, though, depending on the structure of the rest of your code.

[charlie mills]

I tried that and it's working now. thank you