Simple doubt for you guys, about static class

[Vinicius Souza]

Hi guys, I'm creating a version of my microinterpreter in java and I need to know about some few things. The program in java is working nicely but because my lack of knowledge in java properly, I added the tokens on my tokenizer manually. I want to create a table where I can add new tokens easly without need to add it manually.
So, I created a util class where I putted??? some utility functions and where I putted?? my token table. See below:

public class ScriptCommon
{
    // <editor-fold defaultstate="collapsed" desc="Constantes">
    
    static final  char  TOKEN_CLS	   = 'C';
    static final  char  TOKEN_PRINT  = 'P';
    static final  char  TOKEN_DIM      = 'D';
    // etc etc   
    static void ShowMessage(String message)
    {
	JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, message);
    }
}

See, so, how can I put this in a static table? I was thinking in Hashtable class but how can I add information to it statically? I dont want to instanciate the ScriptCommon class, I tryed this:

    @SuppressWarnings("UseOfObsoleteCollectionType")
    static Hashtable token_table = new Hashtable();
    token_table.put ("CLS", "C"); //
    //etc

But this code doesnt compile...
Any sugestions ? Remember, I want it statically... a vector???
Thanks in advance!

[Tony Docherty]

You would probably be better off putting them in a properties file and then loading the properties file at runtime into a Properties Object. A Properties object extends Hashtable so you would be able to access the key values pairs in the same way you do now but the key value pairs would be in a text file so you can add new values without having to recompile your code.

If you really want to do it in a static class then use a static initializer to load the values into the Hashtable which BTW should really be a HashMap.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Why does it have to be static? Why are you hardcoding values? Why are you using legacy classes?

Just pass a Map<String, String> to your interpreter constructor. No static data, no legacy classes and you can read key-value pairs from a file to fill the map.

[Vinicius Souza]

Thanks guys, I will try this Properties object and I got my code working using a static function to initialize my static Hashtable.
Flws!