Why is my program skipping a prompt in a loop?

Question

My code is supposed to continuously loop until "stop" is entered as employee name. A problem I am having is that once it does the calculation for the first employee's hours and rate, it will skip over the prompt for employee name again. Why? (The code is in 2 separate classes, btw) Please help. Here is my code:

package payroll_program_3;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class payroll_program_3
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {

        Scanner input = new Scanner( System.in );

        employee_info theEmployee = new employee_info();

        String eName = "";
        double Hours = 0.0;
        double Rate = 0.0;
        while(true)
        {
            System.out.print("\nEnter Employee's Name: ");
            eName = input.nextLine();
            theEmployee.setName(eName);
            if (eName.equalsIgnoreCase("stop"))
            {
                return;
            }

            System.out.print("\nEnter Employee's Hours Worked: ");
            Hours = input.nextDouble();
            theEmployee.setHours(Hours);
            while (Hours <0)    //By using this statement, the program will not
            {                   //allow negative numbers.
                System.out.printf("Hours cannot be negative\n");
                System.out.printf("Please enter hours worked\n");
                Hours = input.nextDouble();
                theEmployee.setHours(Hours);
            }

            System.out.print("\nEnter Employee's Rate of Pay: ");
            Rate = input.nextDouble();
            theEmployee.setRate(Rate);
            while (Rate <0)    //By using this statement, the program will not
            {                  //allow negative numbers.
                System.out.printf("Pay rate cannot be negative\n");
                System.out.printf("Please enter hourly rate\n");
                Rate = input.nextDouble();
                theEmployee.setRate(Rate);
            }

            System.out.print("\n Employee Name:     " + theEmployee.getName());
            System.out.print("\n Employee Hours Worked:     " + theEmployee.getHours());
            System.out.print("\n Employee Rate of Pay:     " + theEmployee.getRate() + "\n\n");
            System.out.printf("\n %s's Gross Pay: $%.2f\n\n\n", theEmployee.getName(),
                theEmployee.calculatePay());
        }
    }
}

AND

package payroll_program_3;

        public class employee_info
{
            String employeeName;
            double employeeRate;
            double employeeHours;

public employee_info()
    {
    employeeName = "";
    employeeRate = 0;
    employeeHours = 0;
    }

public void setName(String name)
    {
    employeeName = name;
    }

public void setRate(double rate)
    {
    employeeRate = rate;
    }

public void setHours(double hours)
    {
    employeeHours = hours;
    }

public String getName()
    {
    return employeeName;
    }

public double getRate()
    {
    return employeeRate;
    }

public double getHours()
    {
    return employeeHours;
    }

public double calculatePay()
    {
    return (employeeRate * employeeHours);
    }
}

Answer 1

The problem is at:

eName = input.nextLine();

Change this to:

eName = input.next();

It will work.

By default java.util.Scanner class starts parsing the text as soon as you hit the enter key. So inside the loop you should be asking for input.next(); as a line is already being processed.

See javadoc for both the methods.

Answer 2

I assume that it is waiting for input at input.nextLine() but the prompt does not appear.

My guess is that there is a buffering issue somewhere — that the prompt is being printed but the output is not getting to the screen. Try calling System.out.flush() before calling input.nextLine().