How do I reference an object passed through a method?

[will808]

This is hopefully a pretty simple one. I've got an abstract superclass (Account) that defines the generic behavior of a bank account. One of the methods (non abstract) is to transfer funds from one account to another. My set up so far is this:

public void transfer(double transferAmount, Account transferToAccount) {
		
		if(balance-transferAmount<0.00) {
			System.out.println("Insufficient Funds - transfer denied");
		}
		else if (balance-transferAmount>=0.00) {
			balance-=transferAmount;
			transferToAccount.balance += transferAmount;
			System.out.println("Transfer Complete");
			transferToAccount.printBalance();
			
		}
	}

The problem is that the balance variable (which should refer to the variable balance of the instance the money is being transferred from) is being initialized at 0.0d - which is the value I assigned to it in the superclass.

On top of that, the transferToAccount methods aren't working - they are all initialized at the value of the superclass variable as well. I don't know how to get to these instances. Does that make sense?

Thanks in advance

[sjalle]

It is difficult to pinpoint the bug(s) without the code of the abstract class and the
descendant(s). If the metod you've shown here is defined non-abstract in the
abstract superclass, and is invoked using the abstract class, then you should define
this method as abstract in the abstract superclass also.

But I cannot be sure without all the code in view...

[will808]

D'oh - looks like I had a bit of a Homer moment. The problem was that my original transfer method was hard coded between 2 specific account objects, making the "app" useless for expansion. I was told to a) make the transfer behavior more generic, and b) make the method more expandable.

So I took your advice and made the transfer method abstract in the abstract superclass. Then in the two subclasses, I overrode that method with more spcific behavior, but changed the methods using the Account transerToAccount as a parameter.

It seems to work now - I'll double check it later when my head has cleared and the steam has stopped coming out of my ears