Java method not doing what expected. Trying to understand why - java

Trying to write a java method that will take a string, loop through it and where it finds a vowel (A,E,I,O,U,Y) replace it with the vowel plus "OB".
I've written the below but it isn't working as I'd expect and doesn't seem to be matching the current character in my string with the vowels from my list. (The program compiles and runs so it isn't an issue with not importing necessary bits at the beginning. The input string will always be uppercase and only contain alphas.) I'm struggling to figure out where I'm going wrong.
Can anyone help?
public static String obifyText(String text) {
String[] myList = new String[] {"A","E","I","O","U","Y"};
StringBuilder tempText = new StringBuilder(text);
String obify = "OB";
for (int i = 0; i < text.length() -1 ; i ++ ) {
if ( Arrays.asList(myList).contains(tempText.charAt(i)) ) {
System.out.println(tempText.charAt(i)+" found.");
tempText = tempText.insert((i+1),obify);
}
}
text = tempText.toString();
return text;
}

Don't play with indexes.
Managing with indexes could be difficult when you are dealing with changing the string.
Loop on the chars itself as follows:
public static void main(String[] args){
String[] myList = new String[] {"A","E","I","O","U","Y"};
String text = "AEE";
StringBuilder tempText = new StringBuilder("");
String obify = "OB";
for (char c : text.toCharArray()){
tempText = tempText.append(c);
if ( Arrays.asList(myList).contains(c+"") ) {
System.out.println(c+" found.");
tempText = tempText.append(obify);
}
}
text = tempText.toString();
System.out.println(text);
}
OUTPUT:
A found.
E found.
E found.
AOBEOBEOB

charAt returns a char, but myList stores String elements. An array of Strings can never contain values of char. Your if statement never runs.
You can convert the char value to a string:
Arrays.asList(myList).contains(Character.toString(tempText.charAt(i)))
There's just one more problem with your code.
When the code inserts OB after a vowel, there is a side effect: a new vowel O is created. Your code then tries to insert OB after the new O. This is undesired, right?
To make it not do this, you can loop from the end of the string to the start:
for (int i = text.length() - 1; i >= 0 ; i--) {
If this is not a homework question to practice using StringBuilder or for loops, here's a one liner solution using regex:
return text.replaceAll("([AEIOUY])", "$1OB");

You compare two different types in Arrays.asList(myList).contains(tempText.charAt(i)), Arrays.asList(myList) is a List<String> and tempText.charAt is a char. So the contains check will never result in true.
One possible fix, change myList to Character[]
Character[] myList = new Character[] {'A','E','I','O','U','Y'};
There is another problem with the actual insertion, see Pankaj Singhal answer for a solution to that.

Related

Comparing two Strings if word spacing and capitalization do not matter-Java

What I want to do is create a method that takes two objects as input
of type String. The method will return logical truth if both strings are the same (word spacing and capitalization do not matter). I thought to split String, make an Array of elements, add each element to List and then compare each element to space and remove it from List. At the end use a compareToIgnoreCase() method. I stopped on removing space from List for string2. It works to string1List and doesn't work to string2List, I'm wondering why?? :(
I will be grateful for help, I spend a lot of time on it and I'm stuck. Maybe someone know a better solution.
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class Strings {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String string1 = "This is a first string";
String string2 = "this is a first string";
String[] arrayOfString1 = string1.split("");
List<String> string1List = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < arrayOfString1.length; ++i) {
string1List.add(arrayOfString1[0 + i]);
}
String[] arrayOfString2 = string2.split("");
List<String> string2List = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < arrayOfString2.length; ++i) {
string2List.add(arrayOfString2[0 + i]);
}
for (int i = 0; i < string1List.size(); ++i) {
String character = string1List.get(0 + i);
if (character.equals(" ")) {
string1List.remove(character);
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < string2List.size(); ++i) {
String character = string2List.get(0 + i);
if (character.equals(" ")) {
string2List.remove(character);
}
}
System.out.println(string2List.size());
}
}
You can try below solution. As you mentioned word spacing and capitalization do not matter
1.remove capitalization - using toLowercase()
2.for word spacing - remove all word spacing using removeAll() with regex pattern "\\s+" so it removes all spaces.
3. check both strings now.
public class StringChecker {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(checkString("This is a first string", "this is a first string"));
}
public static boolean checkString(String string1, String string2){
String processedStr1 = string1.toLowerCase().replaceAll("\\s+", "");
String processedStr2 = string2.toLowerCase().replaceAll("\\s+", "");
System.out.println(" s1 : " + processedStr1);
System.out.println(" s2 : " + processedStr2);
return processedStr1.equals(processedStr2);
}
}
Your problem has nothing to do with spaces. You can replace them with any other character (for example "a") to test this. Therefore, removing spaces in any of the methods given above will not improve your code.
The source of the problem is iterating the list with the for command. When you remove an item from a list inside the for loop, after removing the i-th element, the next element in the list becomes the i-th current element.
On the next repetition of the loop - when i is incremented by one - the current i + 1 item becomes the next item in the list, and thus you "lose" (at least) one item. Therefore, it is a bad idea to iterate through the list with the for command.
However you may use many other methods available for collections - for instance Iterators - and your program will work fine.
Iterator <String> it = string1List.iterator();
while(it.hasNext())
{
if(it.next().equals("a")) it.remove();
}
Of course there is no need at all to use Lists to compare these two strings.

return the first word in any string (Java)

I have to be able to input any two words as a string. Invoke a method that takes that string and returns the first word. Lastly display that word.
The method has to be a for loop method. I kind of know how to use substring, and I know how to return the first word by just using .substring(0,x) x being how long the first word is.
How can I make it so that no matter what phrase I use for the string, it will always return the first word? And please explain what you do, because this is my first year in a CS class. Thank you!
I have to be able to input any two words as a string
The zero, one, infinity design rule says there is no such thing as two. Lets design it to work with any number of words.
String words = "One two many lots"; // This will be our input
and then invoke and display the first word returned from the method,
So we need a method that takes a String and returns a String.
// Method that returns the first word
public static String firstWord(String input) {
return input.split(" ")[0]; // Create array of words and return the 0th word
}
static lets us call it from main without needing to create instances of anything. public lets us call it from another class if we want.
.split(" ") creates an array of Strings delimited at every space.
[0] indexes into that array and gives the first word since arrays in java are zero indexed (they start counting at 0).
and the method has to be a for loop method
Ah crap, then we have to do it the hard way.
// Method that returns the first word
public static String firstWord(String input) {
String result = ""; // Return empty string if no space found
for(int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++)
{
if(input.charAt(i) == ' ')
{
result = input.substring(0, i);
break; // because we're done
}
}
return result;
}
I kind of know how to use substring, and I know how to return the first word by just using .substring(0,x) x being how long the first word is.
There it is, using those methods you mentioned and the for loop. What more could you want?
But how can I make it so that no matter what phrase I use for the string, it will always return the first word?
Man you're picky :) OK fine:
// Method that returns the first word
public static String firstWord(String input) {
String result = input; // if no space found later, input is the first word
for(int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++)
{
if(input.charAt(i) == ' ')
{
result = input.substring(0, i);
break;
}
}
return result;
}
Put it all together it looks like this:
public class FirstWord {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
String words = "One two many lots"; // This will be our input
System.out.println(firstWord(words));
}
// Method that returns the first word
public static String firstWord(String input) {
for(int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++)
{
if(input.charAt(i) == ' ')
{
return input.substring(0, i);
}
}
return input;
}
}
And it prints this:
One
Hey wait, you changed the firstWord method there.
Yeah I did. This style avoids the need for a result string. Multiple returns are frowned on by old programmers that never got used to garbage collected languages or using finally. They want one place to clean up their resources but this is java so we don't care. Which style you should use depends on your instructor.
And please explain what you do, because this is my first year in a CS class. Thank you!
What do I do? I post awesome! :)
Hope it helps.
String line = "Hello my name is...";
int spaceIndex = line.indexOf(" ");
String firstWord = line.subString(0, spaceIndex);
So, you can think of line as an array of chars. Therefore, line.indexOf(" ") gets the index of the space in the line variable. Then, the substring part uses that information to get all of the characters leading up to spaceIndex. So, if space index is 5, it will the substring method will return the indexes of 0,1,2,3,4. This is therefore going to return your first word.
The first word is probably the substring that comes before the first space. So write:
int x = input.indexOf(" ");
But what if there is no space? x will be equal to -1, so you'll need to adjust it to the very end of the input:
if (x==-1) { x = input.length(); }
Then use that in your substring method, just as you were planning. Now you just have to handle the case where input is the blank string "", since there is no first word in that case.
Since you did not specify the order and what you consider as a word, I'll assume that you want to check in given sentence, until the first space.
Simply do
int indexOfSpace = sentence.indexOf(" ");
firstWord = indexOfSpace == -1 ? sentence : sentence.substring(0, indexOfSpace);
Note that this will give an IndexOutOfBoundException if there is no space in the sentence.
An alternative would be
String sentences[] = sentence.split(" ");
String firstWord = sentence[0];
Of if you really need a loop,
String firstWord = sentence;
for(int i = 0; i < sentence.length(); i++)
{
if(sentence.charAt(i) == ' ')
{
sentence = firstWord.substring(0, i);
break;
}
}
You may get the position of the 'space' character in the input string using String.indexOf(String str) which returns the index of the first occurrence of the string in passed to the method.
E.g.:
int spaceIndex = input.indexOf(" ");
String firstWord = input.substring(0, spaceIndex);
Maybe this can help you figure out the solution to your problem. Most users on this site don't like doing homework for students, before you ask a question, make sure to go over your ISC book examples. They're really helpful.
String Str = new String("Welcome to Stackoverflow");
System.out.print("Return Value :" );
System.out.println(Str.substring(5) );
System.out.print("Return Value :" );
System.out.println(Str.substring(5, 10) );

Comparing arrays

I have String Array of a good couple hundred lines of code. I have two other String Arrays, one with values I want to replace, and the other with the value I want it to replace to. I need to go through each line of the original code and check each line if it contains anything that I need to replace, and if it does, replace it. I want to replace it to a totally different String Array, so that the original is still left unchanged. This is what I have, but it's not exactly working.
for(int i=0; i<originalCode.length; i++) {
if( originalCode[i].contains("| "+listOfThingsToReplace[i]) ) {
newCode[i]=originalCode[i].replaceAll(("| "+listOfThingsToReplace[i]), ("| "+listOfReplacingThings[i]));
}
}
Obviously I need more counting variables somewhere (especially because originalCode.length !=listOfThingsToReplace.length), but I can't figure out where. Would I need more for loops? I tired doing that... but "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space"... Any help please?
I think this should do the trick if I'm understanding the problem correctly
// New Code Array
String[] newCode = new String[originalCode.length];
for (int i=0; i<originalCode.length; i++) {
// New Code Line
String newCodeLine = originalCode[i];
// Iterate through all words that need to be replaced
for (int j=0; j<listOfThingsToReplace.length; j++) {
// String to replace
String strToReplace = listOfThingsToReplace[j];
// String to replace with
String strToReplaceWith = (j >= listOfReplacingThings.length) ? "" : listOfReplacingStrings[j];
// If there is a string to replace with
if (strToReplaceWith != "") {
// then replace all instances of that string
newCodeLine = newCodeLine.replaceAll(strToReplace, strToReplaceWith);
}
}
// Assign the new code line to our new code array
newCode[i] = newCodeLine;
}

Returning Words Within a String Array

I created a method to output a String. Using the split method and a for loop, I added each word in my sentence into a String array, replacxing the last two letters of each word with "ed". Now, my return statement should return each of the words. When I used System.out.print, it worked. When I use a return and call it in my main method, I get this output: "[Ljava.lang.String;#1b6235b"
The error seems so simple but I just don't know where I'm going worng. Any help would be appreciated.
Here is my method:
public String[] processInfo() {
String sentence = this.phrase;
String[] words = sentence.split(" ");
if (!this.phrase.equalsIgnoreCase("Fred")) {
for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
words[i] = words[i].substring(0, words[i].length() - 2).concat(
"ed ");
// System.out.print(words[i]);
}
}
return words;
}
You are printing arrays but arrays don't have a proper implementation of toString() method by default.
What you see is
"[Ljava.lang.String;#1b6235b"
This is [Ljava.lang.String; is the name for String[].class, the java.lang.Class representing the class of array of String followed by its hashCode.
In order to print the array you should use Arrays.toString(..)
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(myArray));
A good idea however, it returns my Strings in an Array format. My aim
is to return them back into sentence format. So for example, if my
input is, "Hey my name is Fred", it would output as, "Hed ed naed ed
Fred". Sorry, I forgot to add that it also seperates it with commas
when using Arrays.toString
Then you should modify your processInfo() returning a String or creating a new method that convert your String[] to a String.
Example :
//you use like this
String [] processInfoArray = processInfo();
System.out.println(myToString(processInfoArray));
// and in another part you code something like this
public static String myToString(String[] array){
if(array == null || array.length == 0)
return "";
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(int i=0;i<array.length-1;i++){
sb.append(array[i]).append(" ");
}
return sb.append(array[array.length -1]).toString();
}
As much as I can get from your question and comment is that your aim is to return them back into sentence format. So for example, if your input is, "Hey my name is Fred", it would output as, "Hed ed naed ed Fred".
In that case you should return a String, and not an array. I have modified your method a bit to do so. Let me know if you wanted something else.
public String processInfo() {
String sentence = this.phrase;
String[] words = sentence.split(" ");
if (!this.phrase.equalsIgnoreCase("Fred")) {
sentence = "";
for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
words[i] = words[i].substring(0, words[i].length() - 2).concat(
"ed ");
sentence += " " + words[i];
// System.out.print(words[i]);
}
}
return sentence.trim();
}
Your commented out call to System.out.print is printing each element of the array from inside the loop. Your method is returning a String[]. When you try to print an array, you will get the java representation of the array as you are seeing. You either need to change your method to build and return a string with all the array entries concatenated together, or your calling code needs to loop through the returned array and print each entry.

Removing duplicate chars from a string passed as a parameter

I am a little confused how to approach this problem. The userKeyword is passed as a parameter from a previous section of the code. My task is to remove any duplicate chars from the inputted keyword(whatever it is). We have just finished while loops in class so some hints regarding these would be appreciated.
private String removeDuplicates(String userKeyword){
String first = userKeyword;
int i = 0;
while(i < first.length())
{
if (second.indexOf(first.charAt(i)) > -1){
}
i++;
return "";
Here's an update of what I have tried so far - sorry about that.
This is the perfect place to use java.util.Set, a construct which is designed to hold unique elements. By trying to add each word to a set, you can check if you've seen it before, like so:
static String removeDuplicates(final String str)
{
final Set<String> uniqueWords = new HashSet<>();
final String[] words = str.split(" ");
final StringBuilder newSentence = new StringBuilder();
for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++)
{
if(uniqueWords.add(words[i]))
{
//Word is unique
newSentence.append(words[i]);
if((i + 1) < words.length)
{
//Add the space back in
newSentence.append(" ");
}
}
}
return newSentence.toString();
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{
final String str = "Words words words I love words words WORDS!";
System.out.println(removeDuplicates(str)); //Words words I love WORDS!
}
Have a look at this answer.
You might not understand this, but it does the job (it cleverly uses a HashSet that doesn't allow duplicate values).
I think your teacher might be looking for a solution using loops however - take a look at William Morisson's answer for this.
Good luck!
For future reference, StackOverflow normally requires you to post what you have, and ask for suggestions for improvement.
As its not an active day, and I am bored I've done this for you. This code is pretty efficient and makes use of no advanced data structures. I did this so you could more easily understand it.
Please do try to understand what I'm doing. Learning is what StackOverflow is for.
I've added comments in the code to assist you in learning.
private String removeDuplicates(String keyword){
//stores whether a character has been encountered before
//a hashset would likely use less memory.
boolean[] usedValues = new boolean[Character.MAX_VALUE];
//Look into using a StringBuilder. Using += operator with strings
//is potentially wasteful.
String output = "";
//looping over every character in the keyword...
for(int i=0; i<keyword.length(); i++){
char charAt = keyword.charAt(i);
//characters are just numbers. if the value in usedValues array
//is true for this char's number, we've seen this char.
boolean shouldRemove = usedValues[charAt];
if(!shouldRemove){
output += charAt;
//now this character has been used in output. Mark that in
//usedValues array
usedValues[charAt] = true;
}
}
return output;
}
Example:
//output will be the alphabet.
System.out.println(removeDuplicates(
"aaaabcdefghijklmnopqrssssssstuvwxyyyyxyyyz"));

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