yup, cliche.
Both the question and the (rather obvious) answer have been posted too many times to count and as usual the person asking the question can't be bothered to do his own research towards finding that answer.

I have done research on the "cannot find symbol" error message and the solutions all involved spellchecking, which I have done extensively (I have even gone as far as writing all the code over a second time more slowly and carefully). The errors are the same both times. It is obvious that I am using a class name in my code that the compiler does not recognize, however, when I try to import the class I get the same messages. I am not certain it needs to be imported anyway, for two reasons: first off, all the classes I have written from this book so far have compiled with no problem so I don't think I should have to add anything to the author's code to make to work; second, the two files are in the same directory...although I actually don't know enough about the programming language to state why that should matter.

Again, I apologize for posting a question that may have already been answered, but I could not find a similar one that would help in any of the other threads on the first or second page--granted, I only checked the ones with subject lines that seemed relevant, but please if someone could just give me some help instead of merely insulting my lack of knowledge regarding what is, according to the guy who first replied, an obvious problem.

Is the Item class being compiled? As in are there a Item.java and Item.class files?

What is the package of the Item class?

Yes, the Item class compiled successfully--there is an Item.java and an Item.class. They also happen to be in the same package, with the code


on the first line of each .java file. I have written the code for and placed these files precisely as the author indicated in the text. hmm perhaps I should try placing the folder which this package is contained in, in the classpath environmental variable. I get the feeling it might make it work although I did already try it on my other computer which was returning the same errors when I tried compiling Storefront.java

...ok, that didn't work. Hmm...tricksy little problemses.

In the Storefront class are you importing the package that Item is in?

Not currently, but I have tried that a few times:


Is that the correct way to import packages and specific classes?

No.

Try: import com.warren.ecommerce.Item;

If that doesn't work we will have to try something else.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere...last time I tried putting the import statements in the Item.java file which really doesn't make much sense since I'd be trying to import a file to itself...dumb. Anyway, I put this:


into the Storefront.java file and that eliminated the four errors. I used org because org is the name of the folder, not com...

Anyway, that leaves me with the following problem, which I will now try researching on google...


If you have any simple advice to offer on this in case I don't find anything on google, I'd be much obliged :-D.

You need to use generics on your collections with 1.5 to avoid this error.

Instead of:
ArrayList myList = new ArrayList();

Use:
ArrayList<MyObject> myList = new ArrayList<MyObject>();