I am new to learning Java and was explained that every variable needs to be declared. Why do I not need to do this in two steps?
int a = Integer.parseInt(console.readLine("How old are you? "));
console.printf("a: %d", a);
You don't need to declare a variable, but when you do so, you must specify a type (or a super type of what is on the right hand side).
The return value of console.readLine("How old are you? ") is a String and printf can take that as a parameter, so there is no missing type information.
Nothing stops you from writing it in one line, i.e.
console.printf("a: %d", Integer.parseInt(console.readLine("How old are you? ")));
This will work without any problem. Writing it in one line becomes a question of preference / readability and whether you want to do anything with the variable before you print it...
As to your comment, you can check in documentation that console.readLine() returns String.
Related
tl;dr;
Why using
string myVariable = "someInitialValueDifferentThanUserValue99999999999";
as default value is wrong?
explanation of situation:
I had a discussion with a colleague at my workplace.
He proposed to use some trash value as default in order to differentiate it from user value.
An easy example it would be like this:
string myVariable = "someInitialValueDifferentThanUserValue99999999999";
...
if(myVariable == "someInitialValueDifferentThanUserValue99999999999")
{
...
}
This is quite obvious and intuitive for me that this is wrong.
But I could not give a nice argument for this, beyond that:
this is not professional.
there is a slight chance that someone would input the same value.
Once I read that if you have such a situation your architecture or programming habits are wrong.
edit:
Thank you for the answers. I found a solution that satisfied me, so I share with the others:
It is good to make a bool guard value that indicates if the initialization of a specific object has been accomplished.
And based on this private bool variable I can deduce if I play with a string that is default empty value "" from my mechanism (that is during initialization) or empty value from the user.
For me, this is a more elegant way.
Optional
Optional can be used.
Returns an empty Optional instance. No value is present for this Optional.
API Note:
Though it may be tempting to do so, avoid testing if an object is empty by comparing with == against instances returned by Option.empty(). There is no guarantee that it is a singleton. Instead, use isPresent().
Ref: Optional
Custom escape sequence shared by server and client
Define default value
When the user enter's the default value, escape the user value
Use a marker character
Always define the first character as the marker character
Take decision based on this character and strip this character for any actual comparison
Define clear boundaries for the check as propagating this character across multiple abstractions can lead to code maintenance issues.
Small elaboration on "It's not professional":
It's often a bad idea, because
it wastes memory when not a constant (at least in Java - of course, unless you're working with very limited space that's negligible).
Even as constant it may introduce ambiguity once you have more classes, packages or projects ("Was it NO_INPUT, INPUT_NOT_PROVIDED, INPUT_NONE?")
usually it's a sign that there will be no standardized scope-bound Defined_Marker_Character in the Project Documentation like suggested in the other answers
it introduces ambiguity for how to deal with deciding if an input has been provided or not
In the end you will either have a lot of varying NO_INPUT constants in different classes or end up with a self-made SthUtility class that defines one constant SthUtility.NO_INPUT and a static method boolean SthUtility.isInputEmpty(...) that compares a given input against that constant, which basically is reinventing Optional. And you will be copy-pasting that one class into every of your projects.
There is really no need as you can do the following as of Java 11 which was four releases ago.
String value = "";
// true only if length == 0
if (value.isEmpty()) {
System.out.println("Value is empty");
}
String value = " ";
// true if empty or contains only white space
if (value.isBlank()) {
System.out.println("Value is blank");
}
And I prefer to limit uses of such strings that can be searched in the class file that might possibly lead to exploitation of the code.
I am trying to use a full id of a block in the getmaterial part of the code below. this does not work any way that i try.
I cannot find any documentation supporting this issue of handling an id which contains a 'colon :' .
Snip: (Example the 5758:6 below does not work and the string name neither.)
emerald.setIngredient('L', Material.getMaterial("5758:6"));
Material.getMaterial(406) //this is expecting an integer so i cannot give it two numbers
Material.getMaterial(406:1) //this fails as is expecting int
Assuming that emerald is a ShapedRecipe object (since you're using the setIngredient(char, Material) method), then you can also use the setIngredient(char, MaterialData) method instead. You could construct the MaterialData object you want using the (deprecated...) MaterialData(int, byte) constructor. Your new code would look like:
emerald.setIngredient('L', new MaterialData(5758, 6));
The colon in the "full id of a block" is just separating the "id" and "data" values. I think this will do what you're looking for, but if not, let me know so I can clarify.
I don't think you're supposed to be dealing with that number colon thing. Instead, if you want to get to, say, the BRICK material, use Material.BRICK or Material.valueOf("BRICK"). If you want to find the name of a Material m, use m.name() which returns a String.
I'm still new to Java and I would like to understand Strings and Arrays so I got this idea of manipulating elements and place them according to my objective. The objective is that there will be Array of Strings "ABBCCCBBAA" and the "AA","BB" must be replaced into "A" , "BA","AB" into CC. "CC","BC" into B. I basically have no idea how to make it happen but I know it must have Arrays of String. Please help
Regular expression can be very handy for you. Code bellow can do, your job with the use of regular expression:
String mainStr = "ABBCCCBBAA";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(AA)|(BB)|(BA)|(AB)|(CC)|(BC)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(mainStr);
while (m.find()) {
String matchedStr = m.group(0);
if("AA".equals(matchedStr) || "BB".equals(matchedStr)){
mainStr = mainStr.replaceFirst(matchedStr,"X");
}
else if("BA".equals(matchedStr) || "AB".equals(matchedStr)){
mainStr = mainStr.replaceFirst(matchedStr,"Y");
}
else if("CC".equals(matchedStr) || "BC".equals(matchedStr)){
mainStr = mainStr.replaceFirst(matchedStr,"Z");
}
}
mainStr = mainStr.replaceAll("X","A").replaceAll("Y","CC").replaceAll("Z","B");
System.out.println(mainStr);
Above code will handle your case of multiple occurrence of same pattern in a given string like:
ABBCCCBBAABBBBAA
will generate output:
CCBBAAAAA.
I am assuming that by "array of strings" you mean:
String[] myvariable = new String[number];
myvariable[0] = "ABBCCBBAA";
myvariable[1] = "some_other_string";
If you are new to Java I suggest you read a beginner's book like Head First Java and also look into java documentation; you don't even have to go that far if you are programming with a decent IDE, like Netbeans (thanks to its intelli-sense feature) is a source of documentation for what you seek (meaning that you can look at all the methods available for a string, read what they do, and see if they can help accomplish what you need).
I am assuming (from what you have said) that you want to replace "AA" for "A", and from that result replace "BB" for "BA", and from that result replace "AB" into "CC", and from that result "BC" into "B".
The code I am posting is REAL simple, and it will only work for this particular case (as I have understood it), if you want to create a method that does this for any string, you need to change some things, but I'll leave that to you.
String[] yourArrayOfStrings = new String[1];
yourArrayOfStrings[0] = "ABBCCBBAA";
String resultOfReplacement= yourArrayOfStrings[0].replaceFirst("AA", "A");
System.out.println(resultOfReplacement); //debugging purposes
resultOfReplacement = resultOfReplacement.replaceFirst("BB", "BA");
System.out.println(resultOfReplacement); //debugging purposes
resultOfReplacement = resultOfReplacement.replaceFirst("AB", "CC");
System.out.println(resultOfReplacement); //debugging purposes
resultOfReplacement = resultOfReplacement.replaceFirst("BC", "BB");
System.out.println(resultOfReplacement); //debugging purposes
The only reason why I created a String[] was because that's what you stated in your question, otherwise I would have simple created a String variable like I did with resultOfReplacement. To access the first element in an array you do arrayVariable[index]. Here I use the replaceFirst function that comes with Java for variables of type String. If you look the method up, it'll tell you that it will look for the first match of the first parameter and replace it with the second parameter.
The System.out.println I have added are for debugging purposes, so you can see on the console what is clearly happening with each replacement. So, the first time I call replaceFirst(...) on the original string which is a[0].
This will happen:
The method will look in "ABBCCBBAA" for the FIRST AND ONLY THE FIRST time "AA" appears and replace it with "A". The result is "return" and you must assign it to a variable if you want access to it to do more actions upon it. In this case, I assign it to a new String variable. You could have just assigned back to a[0], which is likely what you want. (You'd do so like this: a[0]=ourArrayOfStrings[0].replaceFirst("AA", "A");)
For the second replacement, the method will look in "ABBCCBBA" for the first time "BB" appears and replace it for "BA".
See the pattern? This is just a start, and depending on what you want you might need other methods like replaceAll().
Most IDEs will tell you what methods are available for a variable when you access it via ".", so that when you are typing " variablename. " right at that moment a list of methods available for it should appear, if they don´t you can go ahead and do a shortcut like ctrl+space for it to appear and navigate through the methods via the arrow keys so you can read what they do (at least for Eclpise and Netbeans, while programming in Java, it works). Documentation is power!
I have 3 options:
Declare double member and later when I have to pass String use member + "".
Declare double member and later when I have to pass String use Double.toString(member).
Declare Double member = 0.0 and later when I have to pass String use member.toString().
My opinions:
The shortest one. However, member + "" will be converted to new StringBuilder().append(member).append("").toString(), which seems not elegant.
In Double.toString(member) I don't like that it doesn't start from the word member, which is the most important. We only need to convert it. It's better if member is in the beginning, because I pay most attention to the beginning of word. Quick glance and I know "ah, ok I'm passing member". And with Double.toString(member) my very first concentration goes to "ah, ok... a Double, we are doing toString... of a member! Ah ok".
member.toString() looks fine and it can be typed even faster then + "", because of autocompletion in Eclipse. However, objects are much slower then primitives. Reference.
What is the best option? Maybe there are some other options?
The best all-round approach, which will work for anything, is:
String s = String.valueOf(x);
Here x can be a primitive or an object, which (importantly) may be null.
Edit:
The hackaliciuos way is:
X + "";
Although note that this is not very efficient, because it compiles to:
new StringBuilder().append(x).append("").toString();
And the call to .append(x) invokes String.valueOf(x) anyway.
Note that arrays need special treatment:
String s = Arrays.toString(array);
I asked about this array a little while ago, and I can't see what the problem is. Too tired. What have I done wrong? Basically, I am taking a string array and trying to check to see if it contains numbers or an x (ISBN number validation). I want to take the number from a given input (bookNum), check the input, and feed any valid input into a new array (book). At the line
'bookNum.charAt[j]==book[i]'
I get the 'not a statement error'. What gives?
String[] book = new String [ISBN_NUM];
bookNum.replaceAll("-","");
if (bookNum.length()!=ISBN_NUM)
throw new ISBNException ("ISBN "+ bookNum + " must be 10 characters");
for (int i=0;i<bookNum.length();i++)
{
if (Character.isDigit(bookNum.charAt(i)))
bookNum.CharAt[j]==book[i];
j++;
if (book[9].isNotDigit()||
book[9]!="x" ||
book[9]!="X")
throw new ISBNException ("ISBN " + bookNum + " must contain all digits" +
"or 'X' in the last position");
== is java is used for equivalence comparison. If you want to assign it, use a single =.
The first issue here is that charAt is a function, and thus needs parenthesis even though you are accessing with an index like an array.
The other issue is that the line is a boolean expression, which just by itself does not mean anything. A lot of people are suggestion that you mean to make an assignment to that character, but just changing to a single equals causes other problems. The left side of an equals sign needs to be a variable, and the result of a function is not a variable.
Strings are immutable, so you can not simply change one of the characters in the string. Earlier in your code, you have a call to replaceAll(), that returns a new string with the alterations. As written, this altered string is being lost.
There are few odd problems here. For starters, did you mean for book to be an array of Strings, as opposed to just one string? You're trying (assuming CharAt was written properly and the assignment was proper) to assign a character to a string.
Second, instead of copying character by character, why not check the whole string, and copy the whole thing at the end if it is a proper ISBN? Depending on what you do with Exceptions (if you continue regardless), you could add a boolean as a flag that gets set if there is an error. At the end, if there is no error, then make book = to booknumber.replace(etc...)
bookNum.CharAt[j]==book[i];
Should be
bookNum.CharAt[j]=book[i];
You are using an equality boolean operator, not an assignment one.
Looks like you're using .charAt(i) wrong! Assuming that "bookNum" is a String, you should use:
bookNum.charAt(i)==book[i];
Instead. Note that this is a boolean expression, and not "=".
The line bookNum.CharAt[j]==book[i]; isn't a statement. It's a comparison. Perhaps you want bookNum.CharAt[j]=book[i]; (single = instead of ==).
Edit: That's not going to fix things, though, since you can't assign to bookNum.CharAt[j].