i keep getting illegal start of expression error. Help

Question

I'm trying to create a list of words i want to censor but i keep getting the "illegal start of expression " error. Here is the code below.

import java .io.Console;

public class HelloWorld{

 public static void main(String []args){
    Console console = System.console();

    String user = console.readLine(" Enter age");
    int age = Integer.parseInt(user);
        if(age < 18 ){
        console.printf("Sorry you're too young. Exiting!");
        System.exit(0);
     }
        String [] myList ={"stupid", "dummy", "douchebag", "dork", "jerk", "idiot", "nerd"};
          String name =;
          boolean inValid =; 
        do{
           name = console.readLine("Enter Name");
           inValid = (name.equalsIgnoreCase(myList));

         if(inValid){

          console.printf("Sorry that language is not allowed. Try again.  \n\n" );

         }
        } while(inValid);
   }
}

Answer 1 · 2016-03-03T07:55:03Z

March 3, 2016 7:55am

One problem is that you can't do this:

          String name =;
          boolean inValid =;

I suggest you do this instead:

          String name;
          boolean inValid = true;

That is, leave name uninitialized, as you provide a value later. But initialize inValid to true, as you will test and change it to false if the name is invalid.

Next, the compiler doesn't like this:

inValid = (name.equalsIgnoreCase(myList));

because myList is an array, but the equalsIgnoreCase() method takes a String. What you probably intended to do was loop through the array and compare name to each name in the array. But you are not doing that here.

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daniel zaragoza

daniel zaragoza

i keep getting illegal start of expression error. Help

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jcorum

jcorum