How do I return an array by passing a string as reference to the array in Java?

Question

I have array lists of cities defined by state abbreviations.

static List<String> AL = Arrays.asList("ABBEVILLE","ADAMSVILLE",.....
static List<String> AK = Arrays.asList("ADAK","AKHIOK",......

The same thing happens to the array no matter which one is called. How do I pass a string of 'AL' and access the array list AL? I currently use a case statement... But its a lot of code for all 50 and I want to trim it down a bit..

 case "AL":
   for(int index = 0; index < AL.size(); index++){.....}
 case "AK":
   for(int index = 0; index < AK.size(); index++){.....}

Id rather something like this:

for(int index = 0; index < state_abbreviation.size(){
  System.out.println(state_abbreviation[index]);

Matthias · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-15 20:01:39Z

3

You could store every List<String> in a Map and use the state abbreviation as the map's key.

import java.util.*;

class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<String, List<String>> states = new HashMap<String, List<String>>();
        List<String> al = Arrays.asList("ABBEVILLE", "ADAMSVILLE", "...");
        List<String> ak = Arrays.asList("ADAK", "AKHIOK", "...");
        states.put("AL", al);
        states.put("AK", ak);
        System.out.println(states.get("AL").get(1)); // ADAMSVILLE
    }
}

edited Mar 15, 2015 at 20:01

answered Mar 15, 2015 at 19:56

Matthias

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1 Comment

Peter Black Over a year ago

This does not really cut down on the amount of code and misses my for loops.

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