Problems with my return statement

Question

My last return statement does not work can anyone tell me why? I am completly lost!

public class IpAddress
{

private String dottedDecimal;
private int[] Octet= new int[4];
public int i;
//Default constructor

public IpAddress()
{
  dottedDecimal = "0.0.0.0";
  for ( i=0; i<=3;i++)
   {
    Octet[i] = 0;  //setting the array to zero
   }
} // end default constructor

//************************************
//Specified constructor
 public IpAddress(String myAddress)
 {

   dottedDecimal = myAddress;
   String[] parsedOctets;
   parsedOctets = myAddress.split("\\Q.\\E"); // allows to stop at the dot
   for (i=0; i <=3; i++)
   {
       Octet[i] = Integer.parseInt(parsedOctets[i]); // breaking the string down to integers
   }
 }// end specified constructor

//*****************************************************
public String getDottedDecimal()
 {
    return dottedDecimal;
 }

 //*********************
public int getOctet()
 {
     for (this.i=0; this.i <=3; this.i++)
        {
        return this.Octet[i];
        }

 }
} // end ip address class

Answer 1

Looks like homework to me, but this is obviously not going to work:

public int getOctet()
{
    for (this.i=0; this.i <=3; this.i++)
    {
      return this.Octet[i];
    }

}

That will return from the function after the first iteration, you can't return from a function multiple times.

Answer 2

For your last statement, you're running a loop that does nothing but return a value. It'll return the first time, but then the loop stops running, so the other returns don't do anything.

public int getOctet()
 {
     for (this.i=0; this.i <=3; this.i++)
        {
          return this.Octet[i];
        }

}

This is equivalent to:

          return this.Octet[0];

Since it only runs once.

Answer 3

If you mean the 'get octet' function, it will only ever return Octet[0];

The return statement stops execution of the function the first time it is hit. What you really want is:

public int[] getOctet()
 {
          return this.Octet;
 }

Answer 4

I think what you want for that last method is this:

public int getOctet( int which )
{
    if ( which >= 0 && which <= 3 )
        return this.Octet[ which ];
    else
        return -1;  // error. Consider throwing an exception
}

Answer 5

By naming your method getOctect(), it seems that you are hoping to return the array, not an individual int from within the array. In that case, you should simplify it to something like this:

public int[] getOctet()
{
      return this.Octet;

}