Boolean multidimensional arrays working with nested for loops - making it stop

Question

I'm kind of stumped here.

I'm relatively new to Java/Programming in general. I want to make a program that "books seats" in a 4x4 grid. This multidimensional array will be of the type boolean so that if the seat is not taken, it returns false, but if it is taken it will return true. I want to be able to specify different seats, so like the first two rows will be a different section than the last two rows. Right now I have a method but it just books the entire first two rows as soon as I call that method (as it should, logically speaking). But I want to only be able to book one seat at a time, so that it will end that for loop as soon as one seat is booked. If I select that I want to book another seat, it will move to the next available seat in those rows or columns.

Here is the code so far:

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

public class Seats{
int maxRows = 4;
int maxCols = 4;
boolean seating[][] = new boolean[maxRows][maxCols];

String bookSeat = null;

public static void main(String []args){
    Seats seats = new Seats();
    seats.start();

}

public void start(){
    bookSeat = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Book a seat? (y/n)");
    if(bookSeat.equals("y")){
        bookSeat();
    }else{
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Okay.");       
    }
    displaySeats(seating);
}

private boolean bookSeat(){
    boolean isBooked = false;
    for(int row = 0; row <2; row++){
        for(int col = 0;col<maxCols;col++){
            if (seating[row][col] == false){
                seating[row][col] = true;
                isBooked = true;
            }
        }
    }
    return isBooked;

}

private void displaySeats(boolean[][] anArray){

    String seatTaken;
    int r=0;
    int c=0;
    for(int display=0; display<1; display++){
        for(r=0;r<anArray.length;r++){
            for(c=0;c<anArray.length;c++){
                if (seating[r][c]==false){
                    seatTaken = "O";
                }
                else{
                    seatTaken = "X";
                }
            System.out.print("\t[" + seatTaken + "] \t");

            }
            System.out.println("");

        }
    }       
  }
}

Answer 1

private boolean bookSeat(){
    boolean isBooked = false;
    for(int row = 0; row <2; row++){
        for(int col = 0;col<maxCols;col++){
            if (seating[row][col] == false){
                seating[row][col] = true;
                return true;
            }
        }
    }
    return false;
}

I think what you're looking to do is return once you find an open seat and book it -- as shown in the method above. This way the loops won't continue once you book a seat.

Answer 2

Assuming you mean that you want to exit this method as soon as it finds a seat.

private boolean bookSeat()
{
  for(int row = 0; row <2; row++)
  {
    for(int col = 0;col<maxCols;col++)
    {
        if (seating[row][col] == false)
        {
            seating[row][col] = true;
            return true;
        }
    }
  }
  return false;
}