Copying one array into another calling method

Question

I am currently studying for my final Java exam at university and I'm doing the past papers to prepare. I'm stuck with the following problem, I need to create a method that receives a string array of Grades and calculates the total, converting the grades to UCAS tariff points (the question before), I created the following:

public class Test
{
    
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        System.out.println(getUcasTariff("B"));
        
    }

    public static int getUcasTariff(String grade)
    {   int points = 0;
        if(grade.equals("A*"))
        {
          return points = 56;  
        }
        else if(grade.equals("A"))
        {
            return points = 48;
        }
        else if(grade.equals("B"))
        {
            return points = 40;
        }
        else if(grade.equals("C"))
        {
            return points = 32;
        }
        else{
        return points = 0;
        }
    }

    public static int getTotalUcasTariff(String[] grades)
    {   int[] totalPoints = new int[grades.length];
        for(int i = 0; i < grades.length; i++) {

Here, I need to iterate through the grades array and call the method getUcasTariff that changes the string to an int and stores it into the new array I created, totalPoints. I can't make it work though.

        }
        int sum = 0;
        for (int i : totalPoints) {
        sum += i;
        }
        return sum;
    }
}

It would be great if someone can point me into the right direction, or maybe point out a better way to do this.

Answer 1

Just iterate through the array, transform each grade individually and add the return values:

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(getTotalUcasTariff(args));
        System.out.println(getTotalUcasTariff(new String[] {"B", "A*"}));
    }

    public static int getUcasTariff(String grade) {
        int points = 0;
        if (grade.equals("A*")) {
            points = 56;
        } else if (grade.equals("A")) {
            points = 48;
        } else if (grade.equals("B")) {
            points = 40;
        } else if (grade.equals("C")) {
            points = 32;
        } else {
            points = 0;
        }
        return points;
    }

    public static int getTotalUcasTariff(String[] grades) {
        int totalPoints = 0;
        for (String grade : grades) {
            totalPoints = totalPoints + getUcasTariff(grade);
        }
        return totalPoints;
    }
}

Output with command line parameters and without

$ java Test.java "A*" "B"
96
96
$ java Test.java         
0
96