I am trying to make a search function that finds a change in a text and then finds a string that matched the hint from a word bank and narrows down your searches.

 

Here is the one method that is causing the error and the line that it is putting I will make but I think it is just the general area.

 

	public String[] wordSearchHint(String[] choices, int chars, String hint) {
		if (choices.length > 0) {
			String lasthint = "";
			for (int i = 0; i < chars; i++) {
				lasthint = lasthint + "_";
			}
			hint.replaceAll(" ", "_");
			int loc = 0;
			char letter = ' ';
			boolean change = false;
			boolean found = false;
			String[] newchoices = new String[100];
			for (int i = 0; i < hint.length(); i++) {
				if (!(hint.charAt(i) == lasthint.charAt(i))) {
					loc = i;
					letter = hint.charAt(i);
					change = true;
					break;
				}
			}
			if (change && choices.length > 0) {
				for (int i = 0; i < choices.length; i++) {
					if (!choices[i].isEmpty()) {    		//<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <this is the exact line
						if (choices[i].charAt(loc) == letter) {
							newchoices[i] = choices[i];
							found = true;
						}
					}
				}
			} else {
				if (hint == lasthint) {
					return choices;
				}
			}
			if (found) {
				return newchoices;
			} else {
				return choices;
			}
		} else {
			return choices;
		}
	}

 

•  

sorry forgot to show the error it is pulling but here

 

 

It seems pretty clear. Your choices array has a null value at that index. But you haven't shown the code you use to create the choices array so we can't help you. But to debug you can just print out the values of the array to the console and you'll quickly see what the problem is.