Comparing two char arrays in Java - java

I am trying to compare two char arrays lexicographically, using loops and arrays only. I solved the task, however, I think my code is bulky and unnecessarily long and would like an advice on how to optimize it. I am a beginner. See code below:
//Compare Character Arrays Lexicographically
//Write a program that compares two char arrays lexicographically (letter by letter).
// Research how to convert string to char array.
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
String word1 = scanner.nextLine();
String word2 = scanner.nextLine();
char[] firstArray = word1.toCharArray();
char[] secondArray = word2.toCharArray();
for (char element : firstArray) {
System.out.print(element + " ");
}
System.out.println();
for (char element : secondArray) {
System.out.print(element + " ");
}
System.out.println();
String s = String.valueOf(firstArray);
String b = String.valueOf(secondArray);
int result = s.compareTo(b);
if (result < 0) {
System.out.println("First");
} else if (result > 0) {
System.out.println("Second");
} else {
System.out.println("Equal");
}
}
}

I think its pretty normal. You've done it right. There's not much code to reduce here , best you can do is not write the two for loops to print the char arrays. Or if you are wanting to print the two arrays then maybe use System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array_name)); instead of two full dedicated for/for each loops. It does the same thing in the background but makes your code look a little bit cleaner and that's what you are looking for.

As commented by tgdavies, you schoolwork assignment was likely intended for you to compare characters in your own code rather than call String#compareTo.
In real life, sorting words alphabetically is quite complex because of various cultural norms across various languages and dialects. For real work, we rely on collation tools rather than write our own sorting code. For example, an e with the diacritical ’ may sort before or after an e without, depending on the cultural context.
But for a schoolwork assignment, the goal of the exercise is likely to have you compare each letter of each word by examining its code point number, the number assigned to identify each character defined in Unicode. These code point numbers are assigned by Unicode in roughly alphabetical order. This code point number ordering is not sufficient to do sorting in real work, but is presumably good enough for your assignment, especially for text using only basic American English using letters a-z/A-Z.
So, if the numbers are the same, move to the next character in each word. When you reach the nth letter that are not the same in both, then in overly simplistic terms, you know which comes after which alphabetically. If all the numbers are the same, the words are the same.
Another real world problem is the char type has been legacy since Java 5, essentially broken since Java 2. As a 16-bit value, char is physically incapable of representing most characters.
So instead of char arrays, use int arrays to hold code point integer numbers.
int[] firstWordCodePoints = firstWord.codePoints().toArray() ;

Related

Questions regarding programming a single-line calculator in Java

I am currently a early CS student and have begun to start projects outside of class just to gain more experience. I thought I would try and design a calculator.
However, instead of using prompts like "Input a number" etc. I wanted to design one that would take an input of for example "1+2+3" and then output the answer.
I have made some progress, but I am stuck on how to make the calculator more flexible.
Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);
String tempString = userInput.nextLine();
String calcString[] = tempString.split("");
Here, I take the user's input, 1+2+3 as a String that is then stored in tempString. I then split it and put it into the calcString array.
This works out fine, I get "1+2+3" when printing out all elements of calcString[].
for (i = 0; i <= calcString.length; i += 2) {
calcIntegers[i] = Integer.parseInt(calcString[i]);
}
I then convert the integer parts of calcString[] to actual integers by putting them into a integer array.
This gives me "1 0 2 0 3", where the zeroes are where the operators should eventually be.
if (calcString[1].equals("+") && calcString[3].equals("+")) {
int retVal = calcIntegers[0] + calcIntegers[2] + calcIntegers[4];
System.out.print(retVal);
}
This is where I am kind of stuck. This works out fine, but obviously isn't very flexible, as it doesn't account for multiple operators at the same like 1 / 2 * 3 - 4.
Furthermore, I'm not sure how to expand the calculator to take in longer lines. I have noticed a pattern where the even elements will contain numbers, and then odd elements contain the operators. However, I'm not sure how to implement this so that it will convert all even elements to their integer counterparts, and all the odd elements to their actual operators, then combine the two.
Hopefully you guys can throw me some tips or hints to help me with this! Thanks for your time, sorry for the somewhat long question.
Create the string to hold the expression :
String expr = "1 + 2 / 3 * 4"; //or something else
Use the String method .split() :
String tokens = expr.split(" ");
for loop through the tokens array and if you encounter a number add it to a stack. If you encounter an operator AND there are two numbers on the stack, pop them off and operate on them and then push back to the stack. Keep looping until no more tokens are available. At the end, there will only be one number left on the stack and that is the answer.
The "stack" in java can be represented by an ArrayList and you can add() to push items onto the stack and then you can use list.get(list.size()-1); list.remove(list.size()-1) as the pop.
You are taking input from user and it can be 2 digit number too.
so
for (i = 0; i <= calcString.length; i += 2) {
calcIntegers[i] = Integer.parseInt(calcString[i]);
}
will not work for 2 digit number as your modification is i+=2.
Better way to check for range of number for each char present in string. You can use condition based ASCII values.
Since you have separated your entire input into strings, what you should do is check where the operations appear in your calcString array.
You can use this regex to check if any particular String is an operation:
Pattern.matches("[+-[*/]]",operation )
where operation is a String value in calcString
Use this check to seperate values and operations, by first checking if any elements qualify this check. Then club together the values that do not qualify.
For example,
If user inputs
4*51/6-3
You should find that calcString[1],calcString[4] and calcString[6] are operations.
Then you should find the values you need to perform operations on by consolidating neighboring digits that are not separated by operations. In the above example, you must consolidate calcString[2] and calcString[3]
To consolidate such digits you can use a function like the following:
public int consolidate(int startPosition, int endPosition, ArrayList list)
{
int number = list.get(endPosition);
int power = 10;
for(int i=endPosition-1; i>=startPosition; i--)
{
number = number + (power*(list.get(i)));
power*=10;
}
return number;
}
where startPosition is the position where you encounter the first digit in the list, or immediately following an operation,
and endPosition is the last position in the list till which you have not encountered another operation.
Your ArrayList containing user input must also be passed as an input here!
In the example above you can consolidate calcString[2] and calcString[3] by calling:
consolidate(2,3,calcString)
Remember to verify that only integers exist between the mentioned positions in calcString!
REMEMBER!
You should account for a situation where the user enters multiple operations consecutively.
You need a priority processing algorithm based on the BODMAS (Bracket of, Division, Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction) or other mathematical rule of your preference.
Remember to specify that your program handles only +, -, * and /. And not power, root, etc. functions.
Take care of the data structures you are using according to the range of inputs you are expecting. A Java int will handle values in the range of +/- 2,147,483,647!

Java string arrayList: Sorting the elements in descending order (like polynomials in math)

I'm still quite new to programming, so I'm sorry if I caused you to face palm.
Right now, I am trying to create parentheses-expander in Java. The current program can already expand the parentheses, but it can not simplify the results, because the terms are not in the descending order. I do understand that you could try to add the terms without re-ordering them by comparing the variables contained in each of the elements. However, I want the program to "show work" like a human, so I need the terms in descending order.
And for that, I want to create a method that, given a string arrayList, re-orders the elements in something like descending order for polynomials in math.
If any of the variables had exponents, the variable is just repeated to the number of the exponent.
for example:
X^2 = XX,
a^3 = aaa,
Z^5 = ZZZZZ
Also, there will be no negative exponents nor parentheses.
All elements have either + or - at the beginning(and no other operators after that).
All elements have a coefficient, even if it is 1.
Capital letters have higher importance than lower case letters, and elements with just numbers should be re-located to the very end.
I forgot the mathematical word for that, but the terms should be ordered in a interest of A, then B so on until Z, and then a,b,c,...so on.(I mean, terms with most A comes first, B second ,C third... up until z)
Coefficients and operators should be ignored.
For example, if the input was this:
[-1b,+3XX,-4AA,+1aaa,+20CCa,-9ABa,-9ABaa,+20CCCa,+3BBX,+1aab,+10]
Then I want the method to return the arrayList like:
[-4AA,-9ABaa,-9ABa,+3BBX,+20CCCa,+20CCa,+3XX,+1aaa,+1aab,-1b,+10]
I'm very much stuck right here. any help will be appreciated. If I didn't describe my problem clear enough, please let me know. I will clarify.
I believe wolfram alpha already has parentheses expanding capabilities. However, I still want to make this.
If anyone can help me with this, that will be amazing. Thanks in advance!
You have a couple of challenges that need to be dealt with individually:
How do I parse something like -1b into a format I can work with?
How do I sort by a custom sorting rule?
For the first part, your rule is very well-defined and the format is pretty simple. This lends itself well to using a regular expression to parse it:
Also, there will be no negative exponents nor parentheses. All elements have either + or - at the beginning(and no other operators after that). All elements have a coefficient, even if it is 1.
So a good regular expression format might be:
([-+]\d+)(\w+)?
This would result in two "capture groups". The first would be the numeric part, and the second would be the (optional) repeated string part.
After decomposing each entry into these two separate parts, it is pretty easy to come up with a set of rules for determining the sort order:
If both of them are numbers (having only the first part), then sort as numbers
If one of them is a number, and the other has letters, sort the number afterward.
If both have numbers and letters, sort according to the letters only using normal String sorting.
An easy way to do custom sorting is to write a custom Comparator class which would be used as an argument to the sort function. Combining all the ideas presented above that might look something like this:
public class PolynomialComparator implements Comparator<String> {
private static Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([-+]\\d+)(\\w+)?");
#Override
public int compare(String s1, String s2) {
if (s1 == null) throw new NullPointerException("s1");
if (s2 == null) throw new NullPointerException("s2");
int compare = 0;
Matcher m1 = pattern.matcher(s1);
Matcher m2 = pattern.matcher(s2);
if (!m1.matches()) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid Polynomial format: " + s1);
if (!m2.matches()) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid Polynomial format: " + s2);
int n1 = Integer.parseInt(m1.group(1));
int n2 = Integer.parseInt(m2.group(1));
String p1 = m1.group(2);
String p2 = m2.group(2);
if (p1 == null && p2 == null) { // Rule #1: just compare numbers
compare = n2 - n1;
} else if (p1 == null) { // Rule #2: always sort number last
compare = 1;
} else if (p2 == null) { // Rule #2: always sort non-number first
compare = -1;
} else { // Rule #3: compare the letters
compare = m1.group(2).compareTo(m2.group(2));
}
return compare;
}
}
Finally, to tie it all together, here is a simple program that correctly sorts your provided example using this Comparator (with the exception of your second and third entry which I believe is wrong in your example):
public static void main(String args[]){
String input = "[-1b,+3XX,-4AA,+1aaa,+20CCa,-9ABa,-9ABaa,+20CCCa,+3BBX,+1aab,+10]";
String[] array = input.substring(1, input.length() - 1).split(",");
Arrays.sort(array, new PolynomialComparator());
System.out.println("[" + String.join(",", array) + "]");
}
OUTPUT: [-4AA,-9ABa,-9ABaa,+3BBX,+20CCCa,+20CCa,+3XX,+1aaa,+1aab,-1b,+10]
Hopefully you can spend some time walking through this and learn a few ideas that will help you on your way. Cheers!

What should be the logic of hashfunction() in order to check that two strings are anagrams or not?

I want to write a function that takes string as a parameter and returns a number corresponding to that string.
Integer hashfunction(String a)
{
//logic
}
Actually the question im solving is as follows :
Given an array of strings, return all groups of strings that are anagrams. Represent a group by a list of integers representing the index in the original list.
Input : cat dog god tca
Output : [[1, 4], [2, 3]]
Here is my implementation :-
public class Solution {
Integer hashfunction(String a)
{
int i=0;int ans=0;
for(i=0;i<a.length();i++)
{
ans+=(int)(a.charAt(i));//Adding all ASCII values
}
return new Integer(ans);
}
**Obviously this approach is incorrect**
public ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> anagrams(final List<String> a) {
int i=0;
HashMap<String,Integer> hashtable=new HashMap<String,Integer>();
ArrayList<Integer> mylist=new ArrayList<Integer>();
ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> answer=new ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>>();
if(a.size()==1)
{
mylist.add(new Integer(1));
answer.add(mylist);
return answer;
}
int j=1;
for(i=0;i<a.size()-1;i++)
{
hashtable.put(a.get(i),hashfunction(a.get(i)));
for(j=i+1;j<a.size();j++)
{
if(hashtable.containsValue(hashfunction(a.get(j))))
{
mylist.add(new Integer(i+1));
mylist.add(new Integer(j+1));
answer.add(mylist);
mylist.clear();
}
}
}
return answer;
}
}
Oh boy... there's quite a bit of stuff that's open for interpretation here. Case-sensitivity, locales, characters allowed/blacklisted... There are going to be a lot of ways to answer the general question. So, first, let me lay down a few assumptions:
Case doesn't matter. ("Rat" is an anagram of "Tar", even with the capital lettering.)
Locale is American English when it comes to the alphabet. (26 letters from A-Z. Compare this to Spanish, which has 28 IIRC, among which 'll' is considered a single letter and a potential consideration for Spanish anagrams!)
Whitespace is ignored in our definition of an anagram. ("arthas menethil" is an anagram of "trash in a helmet" even though the number of whitespaces is different.)
An empty string (null, 0-length, all white-space) has a "hash" (I prefer the term "digest", but a name is a name) of 1.
If you don't like any of those assumptions, you can modify them as you wish. Of course, that will result in the following algorithm being slightly different, but they're a good set of guidelines that will make the general algorithm relatively easy to understand and refactor if you wish.
Two strings are anagrams if they are exhaustively composed of the same set of characters and the same number of each included character. There's a lot of tools available in Java that makes this task fairly simple. We have String methods, Lists, Comparators, boxed primitives, and existing hashCode methods for... well, all of those. And we're going to use them to make our "hash" method.
private static int hashString(String s) {
if (s == null) return 0; // An empty/null string will return 0.
List<Character> charList = new ArrayList<>();
String lowercase = s.toLowerCase(); // This gets us around case sensitivity
for (int i = 0; i < lowercase.length(); i++) {
Character c = Character.valueOf(lowercase.charAt(i));
if (Character.isWhitespace(c)) continue; // spaces don't count
charList.add(c); // Note the character for future processing...
}
// Now we have a list of Characters... Sort it!
Collections.sort(charList);
return charList.hashCode(); // See contract of java.util.List#haschCode
}
And voila; you have a method that can digest a string and produce an integer representing it, regardless of the order of the characters within. You can use this as the basis for determining whether two strings are anagrams of each other... but I wouldn't. You asked for a digest function that produces an Integer, but keep in mind that in java, an Integer is merely a 32-bit value. This method can only produce about 4.2-billion unique values, and there are a whole lot more than 4.2-billion strings you can throw at it. This method can produce collisions and give you nonsensical results. If that's a problem, you might want to consider using BigInteger instead.
private static BigInteger hashString(String s) {
BigInteger THIRTY_ONE = BigInteger.valueOf(31); // You should promote this to a class constant!
if (s == null) return BigInteger.ONE; // An empty/null string will return 1.
BigInteger r = BigInteger.ONE; // The value of r will be returned by this method
List<Character> charList = new ArrayList<>();
String lowercase = s.toLowerCase(); // This gets us around case sensitivity
for (int i = 0; i < lowercase.length(); i++) {
Character c = Character.valueOf(lowercase.charAt(i));
if (Character.isWhitespace(c)) continue; // spaces don't count
charList.add(c); // Note the character for future processing...
}
// Now we have a list of Characters... Sort it!
Collections.sort(charList);
// Calculate our bighash, similar to how java's List interface does.
for (Character c : charList) {
int charHash = c.hashCode();
r=r.multiply(THIRTY_ONE).add(BigInteger.valueOf(charHash));
}
return r;
}
You need a number that is the same for all strings made up of the same characters.
The String.hashCode method returns a number that is the same for all strings made up of the same characters in the same order.
If you can sort all words consistently (for example: alphabetically) then String.hashCode will return the same number for all anagrams.
return String.valueOf(Arrays.sort(inputString.toCharArray())).hashCode();
Note: this will work for all words that are anagrams (no false negatives) but it may not work for all words that are not anagrams (possibly false positives). This is highly unlikely for short words, but once you get to words that are hundreds of characters long, you will start encountering more than one set of anagrams with the same hash code.
Also note: this gives you the answer to the (title of the) question, but it isn't enough for the question you're solving. You need to figure out how to relate this number to an index in your original list.

Find the letter that occur most times from user with using tables [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Java program to find the character that appears the most number of times in a String?
(8 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I got a task from my university today:
Write a program that reads a ( short ) text from the user and prints the so called max letter (most common character in string) , that the letter which the greatest number of occurrences of the given text .
Here it is enough to look at English letters (A- Z) , and not differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters in the count of the number of occurrences .
For example, if : text = " Ada bada " so should the print show the most common character, this example it would be a.
This is an introductory course, so in this submission we do not need to use the " scanner - class" . We have not gone through this so much.
The program will use the show message input two get the text from user .
Info: The program shall not use while loop ( true / false ) , "return " statement / "break " statement .
I've been struggling with how I can get char values into a table.. am I correct I need to use array to search for most common character? I think I need to use the binarySearch, but that only supports int not char.
I'll be happy for any answers. hint's and solutions. etc.. if you're very kind a full working program, but again please don't use the things I have written down in the "info" section above.
My code:
String text = showInputDialog("Write a short text: ");
//format string to char
String a = text;
char c = a.charAt(4);
/*with this layout it collects number 4 character in the text and print out.
* I could as always go with many char c... but that wouldn't be a clean program * code.. I think I need to make it into a for-loop.. I have only worked with * *for-loops with numbers, not char (letters).. Help? :)
*/
out.print( text + "\n" + c)
//each letter into 1 char, into table
//search for most used letter
Here's the common logic:
split your string into chars
loop over the chars
store the occurrences in a hash, putting the letter as key and occurrences as value
return the highest value in the hash
As how to split string into chars, etc., you can use Google. :)
Here's a similar question.
There's a common program asked to write in schools to calculate the frequency of a letter in a given String. The only thing you gotta do here is find which letter has the maximum frequency. Here's a code that illustrates it:
String s <--- value entered by user
char max_alpha=' '; int max_freq=0, ct=0;
char c;
for(int i=0;i<s.length();i++){
c=s.charAt(i);
if((c>='a'&&c<='z')||(c>='A'&&c<='Z')){
for(int j=0;j<s.length();j++){
if(s.charAt(j)==c)
ct++;
} //for j
}
if(ct>max_freq){
max_freq=ct;
max_alpha=c;
}
ct=0;
s=s.replace(c,'*');
}
System.out.println("Letter appearing maximum times is "+max_alpha);
System.out.println(max_alpha+" appears "+max_freq+" times");
NOTE: This program presumes that all characters in the string are in the same case, i.e., uppercase or lowercase. You can convert the string to a particular case just after getting the input.
I guess this is not a good assigment, if you are unsure about how to start. I wish you for having better teachers!
So you have a text, as:
String text = showInputDialog("Write a short text: ");
The next thing is to have a loop which goes trough each letter of this text, and gets each char of it:
for (int i=0;i<text.length();i++) {
char c=text.charAt(i);
}
Then comes the calculation. The easiest thing is to use a hashMap. I am unsure if this is a good topic for a beginners course, so I guess a more beginner friendly solution would be a better fit.
Make an array of integers - this is the "table" you are referring to.
Each item in the array will correspond to the occurrance of one letter, e.g. histogram[0] will count how many "A", histogram[1] will count how many "B" you have found.
int[] histogram = new int[26]; // assume English alphabet only
for (int i=0;i<histogram.length;i++) {
histogram[i]=0;
}
for (int i=0;i<text.length();i++) {
char c=Character.toUppercase(text.charAt(i));
if ((c>=65) && (c<=90)) {
// it is a letter, histogram[0] contains occurrences of "A", etc.
histogram[c-65]=histogram[c-65]+1;
}
}
Then finally find the biggest occurrence with a for loop...
int candidate=0;
int max=0;
for (int i=0;i<histogram.length;i++) {
if (histogram[i]>max) {
// this has higher occurrence than our previous candidate
max=histogram[i];
candidate=i; // this is the index of char, i.e. 0 if A has the max occurrence
}
}
And print the result:
System.out.println(Character.toString((char)(candidate+65));
Note how messy this all comes as we use ASCII codes, and only letters... Not to mention that this solution does not work at all for non-English texts.
If you have the power of generics and hashmaps, and know some more string functions, this mess can be simplified as:
String text = showInputDialog("Write a short text: ");
Map<Char,Integer> histogram=new HashMap<Char,Integer>();
for (int i=0;i<text.length();i++) {
char c=text.toUppercase().charAt(i));
if (histogram.containsKey(c)) {
// we know this letter, increment its occurrence
int occurrence=histogram.get(c);
histogram.put(c,occurrence+1);
}
else {
// we dunno this letter yet, it is the first occurrence
histogram.put(c,1);
}
}
char candidate=' ';
int max=0;
for (Char c:histogram.keySet()) {
if (histogram.get(c)>max) {
// this has higher occurrence than our previous candidate
max=histogram.get(c);
candidate=c; // this is the char itself
}
}
System.out.println(c);
small print: i didn't run this code but it shall be ok.

Text Arrays in Java

I'm working on a program for a class and was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction. I've worked with Java before, but it's been a while and I'm really rusty. The purpose of this program is to prompt a user to enter a phone number represented by letters (for example CALL HOME would be 225-5466), the program is then to display the phone number based on the letters entered.
We are supposed to store the letters entered by the user into an array and then convert those letters into the actual phone number. Here's what I'm getting stuck on at the moment, I've only worked with arrays consisting of numbers so am not sure how to set this one up. I'm assuming that each index would be one letter, but how would I break the string entered by the user down into individual char characters?
I'm still in the process of thinking through how this program should work and putting it on paper so haven't actually started coding yet, so I apologize for not having any code to share. But this is what I'm thinking would need to happen once the letter representation of the phone numbers were placed in the array:
Declare variables for each letter, like
int a = 1
int b = 1
int c = 1
int d = 2
etc. Or is there a more efficient way to do that? Then use if statements for each index like,
if [0] == a || b || c
[0] = 1
if [0] == d || e || f
[0] = 2
and so on. Like I said, I'm really rusty and am just trying to think my way through this right now before just throwing code at the screen haha. Any pointers would be much appreciated.
Just use String#toCharArray:
char[] characters = string.toCharArray();
You can then get the individual characters from a string.
You could use a series of if statements to see what characters map to what number. But there are more-elegant approaches. I am not sure if you have used Map<K, V>, but you could set up a Map<String, Integer> that maps a letter to its integer representation. Then you'd simply have to iterate over the characters in the string and look up their value.
Since this is homework, this is about as much information that I think is appropriate. Using what I have given you, you should be able to come up with an algorithm. Just start writing the code even if you don't know what the end result will look like. This will give you the following advantages:
Give you a clearer idea of the problem.
Will familiarize you with the problem-space.
Will help you visualize and understand your problem and the algorithm.
What you can do is to create a 2 dimensional array and methods to check the input against it. For example you can do the following:
Create an array numbers of length 10. Each index corresponds to a number you have to call.
Now each entry of the numbers array is an array of chars. So in the end you have something like this :
numbers = [['w/e you want for 0'],['a','b','c'],['d','e','f'], ['g','h','i'], ... etc ]
When you parse the input string you compare each character with a method like this:
private int letterToNumber(char c){
for(i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++)
if(contains(numbers[i], c) return i;
}
and your contains() method should be something like that
private boolean contains(char[] chars, char c){
for(char x : chars)
return(x == c)? true; false;
}

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