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From: Jukka Lahtinen <jtfjdehf@hotmail.com.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: can't return value
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:32:51 +0300
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"bilsch" <king621@comcast.net> writes:

> I thought passing variables was a way to get around the visibility problem - 
> but I'm stuck anyway.  Does anyone have a suggestion?  TIA  Bill S.
>
> public class Name01{
>
>     public static String lastName(String wholeName){
>      for (int i = 0; i <= wholeName.length(); i++){
>          if (wholeName.charAt(i)== ' '){
>             String lastName = wholeName.substring(i,wholeName.length()-1);
>             //System.out.println(lastName);
>             return lastName;
>          }
>      }
>      //return lastName;
>     }

What Eric wrote in his followup, and you could also define lastName
before the for loop and initialize it to null.

   public static String lastName(String wholeName) {
     String lastName = null;
     for (int i = 0; i < wholeName.length(); i++) {
...

Also notice that you probably should change the <= operator to < in the
for loop condition to avoid StringIndexOutOfBoundsException if there's
no space in the parameter String.
And like Eric wrote, there are handier ways to split a String, but
that's not where your current problem is.

-- 
Jukka Lahtinen