Develop Reference

JAVA: Signal start of new input with space instead of enter

I have an assignment to create a program that will take input and print it to the console. Pretty simple. There is one issue though. I have to store the information in separate variables but the input looks like this.
Input:
Blah 123 Green
I'm aware that I can create a single scanner input tied to a single variable that will store all of that as one String but for the assignment Blah, 123, and Green would all have to be stored in different variables. Normally what I would do if I could use the enter key to signal new input would be
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
String first = scan.nextLine();
int second = Integer.parseInt(scan.nextLine());
String third = scan.nextLine();
but in this case, the spaces have to act as the enter key instead. how would I go about this?

You could use next() to read individual inputs:
String first = scan.next();
int second = scan.nextInt());
String third = scan.next();

what is equivalent to isEmpty() for integers?

Below is the script I have at the moment
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class SeeWhatTo
{
public static void main(String args[]) {
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in); //define scan
int a = scan.nextInt();
int sum =0;
while (a>0 )
{
sum = sum +a;
a = scan.nextInt();
}
System.out.println(sum); //print out the sum
}
}
Currently, it stores an input value in a and then adds it to sum and once a negative or zero is given as an input, it suspends itself and outputs the sum.
I was wondering if there's an integer equivalent of isEmpty so that i can do while (! a.isEmpty() ) so when there's no input but an enter, then it would stop and prints out the sum.
A natural followup from that would be, is there a way to assign an input integer to a and check if it is empty or not at the same time in the while condition as in while ( ! (a=scan.nextInt()).isEmpty() )

Scanner can do 2 things:
Read line-by-line (nextLine).
Read token-by-token (next or e.g. nextInt).
These are really two different functionalities of Scanner, and if you're reading tokens then your Scanner basically doesn't know about empty lines.
If you call nextInt, Scanner does two things:
Finds the next token (default: delimited by any whitespace).
Tries to turn it in to an int.
The tokenizing behavior is an important feature of Scanner. If you enter 1 2\n and call nextInt twice, you get 1 and 2. However, if you enter an empty line, the tokenizing Scanner just skips it as whitespace and keeps looking for another token.
So the straightforward answer is "no": you can never get an "empty" int from a call to nextInt in a simply way and still retain the token-by-token behavior. (That's beyond the fact that a primitive variable in Java can't be "empty".)
One easy way to do what you're asking is to use line-by-line reading instead and call parseInt yourself:
Scanner systemIn = new Scanner(System.in);
int sum = 0;
String line;
while (!(line = systemIn.nextLine()).isEmpty()) {
sum += Integer.parseInt(line);
}
But you lose the tokenizing behavior. Now, if you enter 1 2\n, an exception is thrown because nextLine finds 1 2.
You can still read token-by-token with nextInt, but it's more complicated, using a second Scanner:
Scanner systemIn = new Scanner(System.in);
int sum = 0;
String nextLine;
while (!(nextLine = systemIn.nextLine()).isEmpty()) {
Scanner theInts = new Scanner(nextLine);
while (theInts.hasNextInt()) {
sum += theInts.nextInt();
}
}
Here, we can enter 1 2\n, get 1 2 as our next line, then ask the second Scanner to tokenize it.
So yes, you can program the functionality you're looking for, but not in an easy way, because Scanner is more complicated.
edit
Possibly another way is to use a delimiter on the line separator:
// use System.getProperty("line.separator") in 1.6
Scanner systemIn = new Scanner(System.in).useDelimiter(System.lineSeparator());
int sum = 0;
while (systemIn.hasNextInt()) {
sum += systemIn.nextInt();
}
Now, nextInt tokenizes the same way as nextLine. This will break the loop for any input that's not an int, including empty tokens. (Empty tokens aren't possible with the default delimiter.) I'm never really sure if people actually expect Scanner's default delimiting to work the way it does or not. It's possible creating a Scanner in this way makes it behave closer to what people seem to expect for reading the console, just line-by-line.

There isn't an equivalent in the sense that you describe, since String is a variable-length collection of characters, and having zero characters is still a valid String. One integer cannot contain zero integers, since by definition, it is already an integer.
However, your problem revolves around how Scanner works, rather than how int works.
Take a look at scan.hasNextInt(), which returns true if there is an int to read, and false otherwise. This may give you what you want, using something like:
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
int sum = 0;
while(scan.hasNextInt())
{
int a = scan.nextInt();
sum = sum + a;
}
System.out.println(sum);

double print before allowed to respond

I'm still new to programming and have been trying to learn how to fix this code
im trying to input and record a username and password depending on how many users I input, but when i run it it prints out the "whats your username?" question twice before i'm allowed to give a response. I've narrowed the problem down to the user[i]=in.nextLine() part
public static void main(String[] args){
System.out.println("How many Users?");
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
int x = in.nextInt();
String[] user;
user = new String[x];
String[] pass;
pass = new String[x];
for(int i=0; i<x;i++){
System.out.println("What is your Username?");
user[i] = in.nextLine();

Add in.nextLine(); after int x = in.nextInt(); to consume and ignore the new line character left over by call to nextInt()

When you use a scanner it consume only the bytes needed for the requested token.
If the first call is to get the number of users (nextInt) it reads only the minimum number of digits composing it and leave the \n (new line character) not consuming it.
Because you are asking for the next line on the loop the first nextLine use only the \n.
So the best solution to make your code correct is to add a
in.nextLine();
before the for loop.

Why is my message printing twice when I break out of the inner if?

I am having a little problem with my code. Compiling and running works well, however, when I attempt to break out of the inner loop,
System.out.println("Type which category you want to add to.");
System.out.println("Homework, Classwork, Labs, Test, Quizzes, Midterm, Final");
The code above is printing twice to the terminal when I only want it to print once.
I have a feeling that is a simple mistake with the way my brackets are aligned but I am having difficulty with figuring out how to do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
import java.util.Scanner;
public class GetGrade {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
final int MAX = 15;
int[] homework = new int[MAX];
int[] classwork = new int[MAX];
int[] lab = new int[MAX];
int[] test = new int[MAX];
int[] quizzes = new int[MAX];
int[] midterm = new int[MAX];
int[] fin = new int[MAX];
int hwCount, clCount, labCount, testCount, quizCount, midCount, finCount;
double hwTotal, clTotal, labTotal, testTotal, quizTotal, midTotal, finTotal;
double grade = 0;
String selection = "";
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Welcome to GetGrade!");
System.out.println();
while (true) {
System.out.println("Type which category you want to add to.");
System.out.println("Homework, Classwork, Labs, Test, Quizzes, Midterm, Final");
selection = input.nextLine();
if (selection.equals("homework")) {
System.out.print("What percentange of your grade is homework? > ");
double hwPercent = input.nextDouble();
System.out.println("Now begin typing your grades. When you are finished, type -1.");
for (int i = 0; i < homework.length; i++) {
homework[i] = input.nextInt();
hwTotal = homework[i] * hwPercent;
grade += hwTotal;
if (homework[i] == -1) break;
}
}
}
}
}

It's just as trivial as it seems:
The call to input.nextInt(); in your inner loop does not include the newline.
So you are breaking of the innerloop, receiving the next line which only contains the newline - character in input.nextLine(); which is the remaining input of your "-1\n" line and proceed with the main loop again as it does not match "homework".

Try setting the conditional variable in your while loop to an actual boolean rather than true.
Also, when you invoke "break", you are only breaking out of the for loop. If you reassign a boolean variable to false at this point, you would exit the while loop completely.

Just before while loop ends, add a "Do you want to continue? (Y/N)" functionality.
If user enters "N" or anything else, execute another break. And that break will make you get out of the while loop.

The simple way to get your code working is to change
selection = input.nextLine();
to
selection = input.next();
next() only reads in a string value (which is what you are actually doing in your code) instead of the newline character as Peter has suggested.
So the an extra iteration of the while does not take place when you read the newline character.

When you use a scanner to read a line from the keyboard, it reads everything up to and including the newline character the user types to submit their input. So for example:
Type which category you want to add to.
Homework, Classwork, Labs, Test, Quizzes, Midterm, Final
>
If you type "homework" and then ENTER, the actual input becomes "homework\n". input.nextLine() will scan the input until it encounters the first newline character, '\n', which it will consume and then it returns everything up to that point (i.e. "homework").
Your problem here is that input.nextInt() does NOT consume a newline character, and so there is still a newline character in the input buffer by the time your while loop starts another round.
Now begin typing your grades. When you are finished, type -1.
> ...
> -1
=> User input is "-1\n"
-------------------------------
// Meanwhile, back in the code...
for (int i=0;i<homework.length;i++) {
homework[i] = input.nextInt(); // <--- This call consumes "-1" but leaves '\n'
hwTotal = homework[i] * hwPercent;
grade += hwTotal;
if (homework[i] == -1) break;
}
That newline is consumed by the next call to input.nextLine(), leaving the input buffer empty.
while (true) {
System.out.println("Type which category you want to add to.");
System.out.println("Homework, Classwork, Labs, Test, Quizzes, Midterm, Final");
selection = input.nextLine(); // <--- This call consumes the leftover '\n' and returns the empty string
...
And because "" is not equal to "homework", the while loop goes around one more time, but this time the input buffer is empty, and so the call to input.nextLine() behaves as you would expect.
// selection is empty, so this condition fails and the program loops back around
if (selection.equals("homework")) {
...
There are two easy solutions to this problem. You can
Use Integer.parseInt(input.nextLine()) instead of input.nextInt()
Add an extra call to input.nextLine() at the end of your while loop to consume the final newline character
The first option is probably the most robust, and you get the added benefit of a run-time error being thrown if they do not give you a valid integer as input.

Why is the prompt in my for loop printing twice the first time?

The first print statement in my for loop is printed twice before moving on to the next line. But then it runs through the loop like it should after that?
I tried using my debugger, but I've never used it before, we haven't gone over using it in any of my classes and I wasn't too sure what I was doing
public static void main(String[] args)
{
int numElements;
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("How many people are you adding: ");
numElements = keyboard.nextInt();
ArrayBndQueue queue = new ArrayBndQueue<>(numElements + 1);
for(int index =0; index <= numElements; index++)
{
System.out.println("Enter a gender and name (ex: f jenny)");
String name = keyboard.nextLine();
System.out.println(name);
queue.enqueue(name);
}
}

You have what's called an off-by-one error. One of the fundamentals of many languages is that they are zero-based when it comes to indexing. You have got that half-right, you have one bug (actually two), and instead of fixing that bug, you have only fixed the symptom....
Off by one bug
The bug is in your for-loop:
for(int index =0; index <= numElements; index++)
Where you are looping one time too many... you should use < instead of <= in the test condition. That way you will loop numElements times.
Instead of fixing that, you made the queue 1-element too large, so you should change:
ArrayBndQueue queue = new ArrayBndQueue<>(numElements + 1);
to be:
ArrayBndQueue queue = new ArrayBndQueue<>(numElements);
That should sort out the extra loop, and you will still have space for the values.
Scanner management bug
Scanner.nextInt() only pulls the int value off the scanner, not the terminating newline/carriage-return, so when you call nextLine() in your loop it clears the already-in-the-scanner line, instead of waiting for input.
You need to clear the line from the scanner before advancing after the nextInt() call:
numElements = keyboard.nextInt();
keyboard.nextLine();
That should clear your scanner for the next input.
From the documentation:
nextInt() - Scans the next token of the input as an int. This method will throw InputMismatchException if the next token cannot be translated into a valid int value as described below. If the translation is successful, the scanner advances past the input that matched.
"advances past the input that matched" means before the newline/carriage-return.

Best fix is to simply remove the elementType from the scanner method. By doing this, you prevent the first instance of your loop from clearing out the input as rolfl mentions above. Revised code as follows:
for(int index =0; index <= numElements; index++)
{
System.out.println("Enter a gender and name (ex: f jenny)");
//removed "Line" from ".nextLine" to prevent clearing below
String name = keyboard.next();
System.out.println(name);
queue.enqueue(name);
}