lookup method in a sorted linked list

Question

again!

Now my issue is that I need to create a method lookup that will search a linked list in order to find a person and return that person back.

public Person lookup(String name) {
    if(head == null) {
        return null;
    }
    if(head.person.name.compareTo(name) == 0) {
        head = head.next;
        return person;
    }

    Node current = head;
    Node prev = head;
    while(current != null) {
        if(current.person.name.compareTo(name) == 0) {
            prev.next = current.next;
            return person;
        }
        prev = current;
        current = current.next;
    }
    return null;
}

Now the method takes this parameter name, compares the objects inside the list if there is a match it should return the person.The program with my code here is the return value; precisly the value it returns when the comparison equals 0.When I compile I get an error saying that it cannot find the symbol person.How do I tell the program to return the found person? Thanks!

Answer 1

You can find lookup by search node by node, like this:

    public Person lookup(String name) {

        if (head == null) { // check if head is null then Linkedlist is empty and return null
            return null;
        }

        Node current = head; // start from head
        while (current != null) {
            if (current.person.name.equals(name)) { // if equals return person
                return current.person;
            }
            current = current.next; // get the next
        }
        return null;
    }