I think the problems you're having are with:
System.in.skip(1); //remove nl
The argument is a long, not an int, so 1L would probably be better.
But the documentation for anInputStream.skip(long n) says:
Skips over and discards n bytes of data from this input
stream. The skip method may, for a variety of reasons, end up
skipping over some smaller number of bytes, possibly 0. The
actual number of bytes skipped is returned.
So you should test the return value of skip() and you should catch
IOException as well.
Ask your instructor to provide you a stack trace along with the next
bug report.
--
Geoffrey S. Knauth http://world.std.com/~gsk
