Refactoring Java Code: Eliminating or Streamlining a Boolean Variable Outside a For Loop

Question

I am struggling with the following problem in my code:

boolean target = false;
for (Item item : list) {
  if (item.boolA || target == true) {
    if (item.boolB) {
      target = false;
    } else if (item.boolC) {
      target = true;
    } else {
      target = false;
    }
  }
}

I want to eliminate or refactor the 'target' variable outside the for loop, possibly by moving it into a method to make the code more concise. Am I stuck on a problem that has no solution?

I finally tried asking ChatGPT for assistance, but it didn't yield the results I was expecting.

Answer 1

It seems that you want to know whether a list of items satisfies a certain condition, and perhaps base what you would do next based on the outcome. I don't know how your list is being created, but if it is possible, you could have your own class that represents a list of items, for instance ItemsList. This could be a wrapper for a List<Item> with constraints on the kind and the distribution of Items that you could append. One possibility is to have a method inside the ItemsList that does what you would like to do when the condition you want to check for isn't satisfied, and then create a sub-class that corresponds to a list of items that satisfies the same condition and override the method in question by doing what you would like to do when the condition is satisfied.