Text analyzer & modifier (Java)

Question

(1) Prompt the user to enter a string of their choosing. Output the string. (1 pt)

Ex:

Enter a sentence or phrase:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

You entered: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

(2) Complete the getNumOfCharacters() method, which returns the number of characters in the user's string. We encourage you to use a for loop in this function. (2 pts)

(3) In main(), call the getNumOfCharacters() method and then output the returned result. (1 pt)

(4) Implement the outputWithoutWhitespace() method, which outputs the string's characters except for whitespace (spaces, tabs). Note: A tab is '\t'. Call the outputWithoutWhitespace() method in main(). (2 pts)

Ex:

Enter a sentence or phrase:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

You entered: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Number of characters: 46

String with no whitespace: Theonlythingwehavetofearisfearitself.

Answer 1

One way to solve the exercise to express the removal of whitespaces by using the regular expression: \\s+ and passing it to String.replaceAll() with an empty string which is the character we replace whitespaces and tabs with.

On the other hand I am not sure why they want you to use a for loop to count the number of characters in the string, when String has a built-in length() method in Java. (Even if you decided to write the for-loop you would be relying on length(), but in that case your for-loop would just increment a counter.)

import java.util.Scanner;

public class WhitespaceRemover{

private String inputString;

public WhitespaceRemover(String inputString) {

this.inputString = inputString;

}

private int getNumOfCharacters() {

return inputString.length();

}

private String outputWithoutWhitespace() {

return inputString.replaceAll("\\s+","");

}

public static void main(String args[]) {

System.out.print("Enter a sentence or phrase: ");

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);

String inputString = scanner.nextLine();

scanner.close();

System.out.println("You entered: " + inputString);

WhitespaceRemover remover = new WhitespaceRemover(inputString);

System.out.println("Number of characters: " + remover.getNumOfCharacters());

System.out.println("String with no whitespace: " + remover.outputWithoutWhitespace());

}

}

Answer 2

import java.util.*;

class SeanBStr

{

private Scanner scanner;

private String strBuff;

private String [] tokens;

public SeanBStr()

{

scanner = new Scanner (System.in);

strBuff="";

}

public void Input()

{

System.out.print("Please input the string :>");

strBuff = scanner.nextLine();

tokens = strBuff.split(" ");

}

public int getNumOfCharacters()

{

return(strBuff.length());

}

public void outputWithoutWhitespace()

{

for (int iLoop=0; iLoop<tokens.length; iLoop++)

{

System.out.print(tokens[iLoop]);

}

}

String GetStr() { return(strBuff); }

public static void main(String args[])

{

SeanBStr x = new SeanBStr();

x.Input();

System.out.println(x.GetStr());

System.out.println(x.getNumOfCharacters());

x.outputWithoutWhitespace();

}

}