My method need to return a boolean. theres a for loop in the body and an if-else statement within th-CodePudding

public static boolean addPassIfUnique(HashMap<String, EntryPass> entryPassHashMap,EntryPass entryPass) {
    //fill in method
    boolean isThere;
    for (HashMap.Entry<String, EntryPass> entry : entryPassHashMap.entrySet()) {
        if (entry.getValue().equals(entryPass)) {
            isThere = true;
        } else {
        entryPassHashMap.put(entryPass.getName()   entryPass.getId(), entryPass);
            isThere = false;
        }
    }
    return isThere;
}

Im expecting my if-else statements to update the variable "isThere" but when I try returning "isThere" it tells me it hasn't been initialized.

CodePudding user response：

Your isThere variable ONLY gets initialized if the entryPassHashMap.entrySet() contains items. If the entrySet() is empty, then the for loop doesn't run, and thus isThere remains uninitialized.

CodePudding user response：

The method as written, will have uninitialised isThere for empty map - your for loop will not do anything, and your boolean will remain uninitialised.

Think again on what you are doing here - I suggest rethinking and rewriting from scratch.