Assigning values to instance fields

[Ted Scofield]

Hi guys,

Suppose I have a class Person with instance fields

private String name = "Ted";
private String surname = "Scofield";
private int currentAge = 99;

I would like to assign an int value to all the instance fields, for example: name = 1, surname = 2, currentAge = 3. But this mustn't change the original value of a field.

Example:
Suppose class Person has a method

print (int value) {
  System.out.println(value);
}    

Then the output of print(1) should be Ted.

I was trying to do this with a switch sentence but since the fields are of different data type, I am now stuck. Could you think of any elegant solution?

Thanks,
Ted

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Ted,
Take a look at the "enum" keyword in Java. This lets you use constants to refer to things. You could use an enum instead of the int. Then a switch could map the enum value to your type.

[Steve Luke]

Why do you want to do that?

Anyway, one way would be to use static constants in the Person class to translate between the field you want to display and the integer input. For example:

class Person
{
    public static final int GIVEN_NAME_FIELD = 1;
    public static final int SURNAME_FIELD = 2;
    public static final int CURRENT_AGE_FIELD = 3;

    private String name = "Ted";
    private String surname = "Scofield";
    private int currentAge = 99;

    public void print(int field)
    {
        switch (field)
        {
            case GIVEN_NAME_FIELD:
                //...

[Hunter McMillen]

I like Steve's way better, and besides don't enum ordinal values start at 0?