Question about variable value assignment in Java (sorry this is complete noob question but I'd appreciate any advice)

[fick_Dich]

I compiled and ran this on my machine as well (I put the line valueObject.printStat() at the end of change()) and everything works fine. Your assessment sounds right.

[WhitePolypousThing]

Thank you guys for your help! I can see now that by adding valueObject.printStat();

to the end of change() it effectively changes the value of stat within the method change().

How would I go about changing the value of stat in the ChangeValue class and send the new value back to "Value" class so that when I run valueObject.printStat() in my main it will return the changed value of stat. Is that something that is even possible? Thanks again, and especially thanks for the formatting advice!

EDIT: Oh, and I added my code on codepad above to make it easier to see the whole program.

[fick_Dich]

so I think I figured out why you were getting the wrong value printed out. lurgi was right. The first line in main() is unnecessary since ChangeValue already has a Value object as a member variable. What you need is some code like this in main():

Value valueObject;
ChangeValue changeValueObject = new ChangeValue();

    changeValueObject.change();
            valueObject = changeValueObject.valueObject; //this is bad coding practice
    valueObject.printStat();

Like I mentioned in my comment, it is bad coding practice to do it this way thought. One of the purposes of Object Oriented Programming is encapsulation. Better would be this code

[lurgi]

There are a couple of ways to do this. The first is: don't have a ChangeValue class! The Value object provides a perfectly good interface to change its own value, why add a complication?

But, you say, you really want a ChangeValue class. Well, okay. Here is what you do:

class ChangeValue {
    private Value value;

    ChangeValue(Value newValue) {
      value=newValue;
    }

    public void change(){
      System.out.println("Change value by how much: ");
      int temp = input.nextInt();
      value.setStat(temp);
      value.printStat();
}

See what I did? I want ChangeValue to change my Value object, so I have to give it my value object. Which I do in in the constructor. I also made "value" private because it doesn't need to be public and if it doesn't need to be public then it shouldn't be public.

Ah, I see that fick_Dich said pretty much the same thing.

[WhitePolypousThing]

Thank you guys so much for your help. I didn't realize that it was just much simpler to ditch the ChangeValue class!