How would I print all values in a TreeMap?

Question

I have a project that I'm working on for my Java class (obviously) and I must have missed the lecture on how to interact with TreeMaps. I have no idea what I'm doing with this part and I'm not finding a lot of help from Google.

For the first case in the program, I have to print all values of a TreeMap. The following is the code I was provided and the work I have done with it. Everything in case A is mine, but it isn't working. Any help would be appreciated.

import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.TreeMap;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class prog7 {
 public static void main(String args[])
 throws FileNotFoundException
 {
Scanner kb=new Scanner(System.in);

/*here, add code to declare and create a tree map*/
TreeMap treeMap = new TreeMap();

/*here, add code to declare a variable and
 let it be the key set of the map
 */
String key;

//temporary variables
String tempWord;
String tempDef;

//the following code reads data from the file glossary.txt
//and saves the data as entries in the map
Scanner infile=new Scanner(new File("glossary.txt"));

while(infile.hasNext())
{
  tempWord=infile.nextLine();
  tempDef=infile.nextLine();

  /*here, add code to add tempWord and tempDef
   as an entry in the map
   */
  treeMap.put(tempWord, tempDef);

}
infile.close();

while(true)
{
  System.out.println();
  System.out.println();

  //show menu and prompt message
  System.out.println("Please select one of the following actions:");
  System.out.println("q - Quit");
  System.out.println("a - List all words and their definitons");
  System.out.println("b - Enter a word to find its definition");
  System.out.println("c - Add a new entry");
  System.out.println("d - Delete an entry");
  System.out.println("Please enter q, a, b, c or d:");

  String selection=kb.nextLine();  //read user's selection
  if (selection.equals("")) continue; //if selection is "", show menu again

  switch (selection.charAt(0))
  { 
    case 'q':
      System.out.println("\nThank you.");
      return;

      /*write code for the cases 'a','b','c' and 'd'
       so that the program runs as in the sample run
       */

    case 'a':
       for (String treeKey : treeMap.keySet())
          System.out.println(treeKey);


    break;

Answer 1

Iterate over the entrySet rather than the keySet. You get a set of Map.Entry<K, V> which have convenient getKey() and getValue() methods.

That said, Java's standard Map implementations have an implementation of toString() that does what you want. Of course, I reckon you'll only get points for reimplementing it, not for cleverly avoiding it...

for (Map.Entry<K, V> entry : myMap.entrySet()) {
     System.out.println("Key: " + entry.getKey() + ". Value: " + entry.getValue());
}