Need help figuring out what is wrong with my Java code

Question

Here is the problem that I am working on:

"You should implement the function String findLongestName(String [] names) which takes an array of Strings as an input containing a list of names, and return the String that has the longest name.

To do so, try to follow these steps:

1. The first step is to calculate and store the length of the input array, this is done using names.length; and store that in an integer variable.
2. Then create a new String called longestName that will store the longest name in the array of names, initialize it with the first name in the array, that is names[0].
3. Next, you should create a for loop that will compare every name in the array using names[i] against the longestName. Only replace the longestName value if the names[i] is longer .
4. Finally, return the longestName variable as the return value of the function."

Here is my attempted solution:

public String findLongestName(String [] names){

int size = names.length;

String longestName = names[0];

int longestNameSize=longestName.length();

for(int i=1; i<size; i++){

if(longestNameSize[i]>longestNameSize){

longestName=names[i];

}

}

return longestName;

}

Answer 1

You're on the right track! Did you notice that if you tried to compile, you got some sort of error regarding this bit: `longestNameSize[i]` ? In my IDE, I get the error "array required, but not found".

That's because you're trying to treat longestNameSize as if it's an array -- see those square brackets trying to access an element of the supposed array -- but it's not an array. We can see earlier in your program, it's declared as an int -- not an array of ints, but a single int.

What you wanted to write there was something that referenced the `names` array -- the idea is that you're using that for loop to iterate over each element in that `names` array, comparing each element's length to the longest length you've found so far. So that `longestNameSize[i] `should be changed to `names[i]`.

You also forgot to actually compare the length of the item at `names[i]`. And finally, the updating of the longest length found so far in `longestNameSize` is missing. So here's the updated program, with some comments highlighting all this.

public static String findLongestName(String[] names) {

int size = names.length;

String longestName = names[0];

int longestNameSize = longestName.length();

for (int i = 1; i < size; i++) {

// Compare the length of the next item in names against the largest length found so far.

if (names[i].length() > longestNameSize) {

// We've found a longer name, so update longestName and the longestNameSize to match what

// we just found.

longestName = names[i];

longestNameSize = longestName.length();

}

}

return longestName;

}

Answer 2

Here is my solution

public static String findLongestString(String[] strings) {

String longestString = "";

for (String s : strings) {

if (s.length() > longestString.length()) {

longestString = s;

}

}

return longestString;

}

Here is how you implement as a class

class FindLongestString {

public static void main(String[] args) {

String[] myStrings = {"apple", "banana", "cherry", "date"};

String longestString = findLongestString(myStrings);

System.out.println("The longest string is: " + longestString);

}

public static String findLongestString(String[] strings) {

String longestString = "";

for (String s : strings) {

if (s.length() > longestString.length()) {

longestString = s;

}

}

return longestString;

}

}