Hello all,

I am an online student in an intro to Java programming course and am a little stuck on my current program. I do not want the answer, but rather help figuring out what it is I am doing wrong. The program is supposed to prompt for an employee name, their hourly rate of pay, the number of hours they worked, and output their weekly pay. I have that part down, but now the course asks us to expand on that program to include a loop for the employee name, hourly rate, hours worked, and total weekly pay. The loop should be terminated when stop is entered for the employee name. I haven't got to the "stop" part yet because I cannot get the program to loop correctly. In command prompt, this is what it looks like...

Enter employee name or stop to quit: John Doe
Enter rate of pay: 5.00
Enter hours worked: 10
Total weekly pay for John Doe is $50.00
Enter employee name or stop to quit: Enter rate or pay:

My code is not complete, as I haven't got past the loop. Here is my code




//Checkpoint Payroll Program Part 2
//Multiplication program that calculates and displays an employees weekly pay


import java.util.Scanner; //program uses class Scanner

public class Payroll2

{
//main method begins execution of Java application
public static void main( String args[] )
{
// create Scanner to obtain input from command window
Scanner input = new Scanner( System.in );


String fName; // employee name
float rate;// first number to multiply
float hours;// second number to multiply
float total;// total of rate times hours
float counter;// number of employee names entered




// processing phase
// prompt for input and read employee name from user

System.out.print( "Enter employee name or stop to quit: " );// prompt
fName = input.nextLine(); // read employees name

// loop until sentinel value read from user
while ( fName != "stop" )
{

System.out.print( "Enter pay rate: ");// prompt
rate = input.nextFloat(); // read first number from user

System.out.print( "Enter hours worked: ");// prompt
hours = input.nextFloat(); // read second number from user

total = rate * hours; // multiply numbers

System.out.printf( "Weekly pay for " +fName+ " is $% s\n", total ); //display employee name and weekly total


} // end while



} // end method main



} // end class Payroll2


Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Also any tips for setting the sentinel value would be great, as I haven't been able to find in my text if I 1. Need to set the sentinel value
2. How to set the sentinel value


Thanks much,

dno117

You don't compare Strings with either == or != use

And, before you ask, putting "stop" instead of fName first, avoids a possible NullPointerException if fName happens to be null. That does not mean you won't have problems inside the while if it is null, so you should probably do

Thank you Masijade, your input has been very helpfull and I greatly appreciate it



dno117