Switch statement is not accepting String variable

Question

Can someone please tell me why the switch statement is not recognizing the gat String variable. The IDE tells me that a primitive is required (int, char, short ....), but it found a string.

String gat = temp[i];

switch (gat) {
    case "a":
        output[i] = 12 * k;
        break;
    case "b":
        output[i] = 23 * k;
        break;
    case "c":
        output[i] = 34 * k;
        break;
}

Answer 1

Your project compliance level is set to Java 6 or earlier, you cannot use String as case labels before Java 7. But, in the case of your question you might use charAt(0)

String gat=temp[i];
switch (gat.charAt(0))
{
case 'a':
    output[i] = 12 * k;
    break;
case 'b':
    output[i] = 23 * k;
    break;
case 'c':
    output[i] = 34 * k;
    break;
}