Comparing a player's name to input

Hi,
I need to get a player's name checked against a list and I have this so far:

Code:java

public String getPlayersFromStats(String name){
        name = name.toLowerCase();
        //get player name passed in from players array
        for(int i = 0; i<players.size(); i++){
            if (players.get(i).toLowerCase().contains(name)) {
                return name;
            }
        }
 
        return null;
 
 
 
 

We will assume that if it passes null it will be handled. "players" is an arraylist of player names already inputed from a file. I'm having the issue of passing in a name and having it returned. In theconfig the name is "Gopaintman", to this method I pass "Gopaintman" and I get a NPE. Any ideas?

 

Why not just use: if(players.contains(name))?

 

You could try using another type of for loop and doing it this way...

Code:java

    public String getPlayersFromStats(String name)
    {
        String nameToReturn;
        for(String s : players) // <-- your players arraylist
        {
            if(s.contains(name))
                nameToReturn = s;
        }
        return nameToReturn;
    }

 

The thing is that I'm not trying to get a player. I'm comparing input against the list to see if it works, to then allow it to do something else.

 

Why you want to compare a string list with a string to get wheter they are in the list or not manually and don't want to use the contains() method?
If you see problems with case: Just do playername.toLowerCase() and add this to the list.