Notepad can not find symbol for Average, max, min, etc

Question

First, this is a homework assignment. I am supposed to create a program using a switch command. It asks the user to input 3 integers, then input an integer of 1-5 for the five cases average, max, min, total, and exit. I have pretty much completed this program, first having a user input 3 integers, then creating the switch "menu" structure, and inside each case, I attempted to create the mathematics for each of the arithmetic functions.

My error message is "cannot find symbol", which is a broad and vague error message to post about. Everything I have Googled, or found on this site seems to be unrelated to the specific symbols that my program is missing, and/or can be typographical in nature. So, unfortunately, I've had to create another thread about this.

My program can not find the symbols average, max, min, and et cetera. I believe that I may have done my arithmetic algorithms wrong, and they are either not initialized properly or at all, or I need to set them to zero before the switch command is ever used.

I'll need to post the code so you can see what I have done:

>public static void main( String args[] )
  {
    // Attempting to initialize the 3 integers AND the user-input early on
    int n1, n2, n3, n4; 

    Scanner sc = new Scanner( System.in);

    while ( true )
    {
        System.out.println ( "Please give three integers separated by spaces: " );
        n1 = sc.nextInt();
        n2 = sc.nextInt();
        n3 = sc.nextInt();

        // building a menu - hoping integers aboive will work in Switch command
        System.out.println( "\n****** Analysis Menu ******" );
        System.out.println( "1: Average" );
        System.out.println( "2: Maximum" );
        System.out.println( "3: Minimum" );
        System.out.println( "4: Total" );
        System.out.println( "5: Exit" );
        System.out.println( "*******************\n" );

        n4 = sc.nextInt(); // get the user selection

        if ( n4 == 1 )
            {
                Average = n1 + n2 + n3 / 3;
                System.out.print( "Average = " + Average );
            }
        else if ( n4 == 2 )
            {
                max = n1;
                if ( max < n2 ) max = n2;
                if ( max < n3 ) max = n3;

                System.out.println( "Maximum = " + max );
            }
        else if ( n4 == 3 )
            {
                min = n1;
                if ( min > n2) min = n3;
                if ( min > n3) min = n2;
                System.out.print( "Minimum = " + min );
            }
        else if ( n4 == 4 )
            {
                total = sum;
                System.out.print( "total = " + total );
            }
        else if ( n4 == 5 )
            {
                System.out.println( "You have selected Exit." );
                break;
            }
        else
            {
                System.out.println( "No such selection exists." );

The error messages say they cannot find every total, min, max, average, and sum in this. So I am not sure if I need to initialize them somehow, set them to 0, or even how to do that in this context.

Why do you believe they may be "not initialized properly or at all"? — Jongware, Oct 18 '14 at 13:44
you were asked to use switch statement, right ? but you are not using it at all...you are using if/else instead. — Sufiyan Ghori, Oct 18 '14 at 13:47
I was not asked to explicitly use a switch statement, but what i was asked to create looked similar to a sample that I based this off of. And the "switch" statement that it used, used if/else statements for some reason, and I couldn't quite grasp the Case statement alternatives to try an actual switch instead. I also believed that maybe my average statement and such were not being found because I had not set them to zero or announced them, so the program maybe did not expect them or something. — 7vincent7black7, Oct 18 '14 at 13:51

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 18 '14 at 13:51

There are multiple issues in above code: 1. Average, min, max variable not defined. 2. You average logic is not right. 3. You are missing end brace.

I tried to modify these and this is what i came up with.

public static void main( String args[] )
{
// Attempting to initialize the 3 integers AND the user-input early on
int n1, n2, n3, n4; 
int Average, max, min, total;
Scanner sc = new Scanner( System.in);

while ( true )
{
    System.out.println ( "Please give three integers separated by spaces: " );
    n1 = sc.nextInt();
    n2 = sc.nextInt();
    n3 = sc.nextInt();

    // building a menu - hoping integers aboive will work in Switch command
    System.out.println( "\n****** Analysis Menu ******" );
    System.out.println( "1: Average" );
    System.out.println( "2: Maximum" );
    System.out.println( "3: Minimum" );
    System.out.println( "4: Total" );
    System.out.println( "5: Exit" );
    System.out.println( "*******************\n" );

    n4 = sc.nextInt(); // get the user selection

    if ( n4 == 1 )
        {
            Average = (n1 + n2 + n3) / 3;
            System.out.print( "Average = " + Average );
        }
    else if ( n4 == 2 )
        {
            max = n1;
            if ( max < n2 ) max = n2;
            if ( max < n3 ) max = n3;

            System.out.println( "Maximum = " + max );
        }
    else if ( n4 == 3 )
        {
            min = n1;
            if ( min > n2) min = n3;
            if ( min > n3) min = n2;
            System.out.print( "Minimum = " + min );
        }
    else if ( n4 == 4 )
        {
            total = n1 + n2 + n3;
            System.out.print( "total = " + total );
        }
    else if ( n4 == 5 )
        {
            System.out.println( "You have selected Exit." );
            break;
        }
    else
        {
            System.out.println( "No such selection exists." );
        }
}
}

1. You are absolutely right, thank you. 2. Thank you for that as well. I didn't even think about how the 3 numbers would not be added together independent of the division. 3. Rest assured. :) I wanted to be able to trim the amount of code I put in my question, but could not because my if/else statement was so long and extensive. One of the things I did do, was leave out my end braces because they could have been seen as unrelated. 4. Here's another I just now fixed. Some of my Else statements use "print" instead of "println". So the followup userinput, gets tacked onto the output. — 7vincent7black7, Oct 18 '14 at 14:35

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 18 '14 at 13:45

0

You need to define Average,min,max,total as a variable just like n1,..,n4. I mean decimal Average;

BTW it's better to avoid naming variable like this for example minValue or maxValue are better in naming.

answered Oct 18 '14 at 13:45

Reza

18,865
13
88
163

Thank you. So that maeans I need to announce those 4 symbols as integers with n1-4, and as values? – 7vincent7black7 Oct 18 '14 at 13:53

Notepad can not find symbol for Average, max, min, etc

2 Answers2