Array declaration using lists - java

So I noticed something.
When doing a recursive method on codingbat, I looked at the:
String abc = "abc";
String mod = abc.substring(1);
System.out.println(mod); //prints "bc"
So I thought:
Hey, why not have a substring-like method for arrays?
For example:
String[] abc = {"a", "b", "c"};
String[] mod = abc[1, str.length];
for(int i = 0; i < mod.length; i++){
System.out.print(mod[i]);
if(i + 1 != mod.length){
System.out.print(", ");
}
}
// This would print out: "b, c"
So, as you can see from this, it is like the substring method as it adds the Objects from the first array to the second array from start index, to end index, but not including the end index (avoids OutOfBounds Exceptions).
How would this be going around to be made since I cannot seem to find the class that controls the "[ ]"'s since something has to regulate them because they aren't just "there" they had to be added in some way.
Thanks for any constructive criticism and feedback.
FirexRanger8

How would this be going around to be made since I cannot seem to find the class that controls the "[ ]"'s since something has to regulate them because they aren't just "there" they had to be added in some way.
They are "just there" in that they're hard-coded as part of the language and platform.
If you want to change how arrays are handled by the language, you'll have to make a change to the Java compiler. If you want to change how they behave at execution time, you'll have to change the JVM...

They're part of the Java language spec and what they do can't be changed, in Java.
There are other languages (ie: Groovy) that target the JVM, have a language syntax similar to Java, and do support things like overriding operators such as array indexing.
But, it can't be done in Java.

You can't overload operators like in c++, so achieving that exact syntax is not possible in java. But there already is a subList function exposed in List interface, maybe that is what you want?
If you're interested in doing something like this you should look at alternate JVM languages like scala or groovy, which have much more flexible syntax. For example, see:
Slice notation in scala?

I'm pretty sure this is a wheel that's already been invented:
String[] abc = { "a", "b", "c" };
String[] mod = Arrays.copyOfRange(abc, 1, abc.length); // now mod = [b, c]

The java.util.Arrays.copyOfRange function will do what you want ("a substring-like method for arrays") (just not with the syntax you want).

Related

What is the use of converting the array to a string in this line "System.out.println(new String(array1));"

This program is taken from the text book I use to teach the students with. In the last line of the code I do not understand what the author was trying to say new String(array2). I get the same output without the new String i.e. printing directly array2.
public class ArrayCopyDemo
{
public static void main(String [] args)
{
char [] array1 =
{'d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k'};
char [] array2 = new char[15];
System.arraycopy(array1, 3, array2, 0, 7);
System.out.println(new String(array2));
}
}
Evidently the person writing this knew about arrays not overriding toString. We've all been burned by that one, it only takes once printing out something and getting a hashcode back to make the point.
But maybe the writer didn't know that println has an override for char[]; I know I was not aware of it until a few minutes ago. You can do a lot of Java programming without ever needing that. If you in fact don't know about that then it would make sense to do the conversion explicitly like the posted code.
(Or just as likely, it could be the author did know but didn't want to assume his students knew about it. When you write code meant for beginners to read you want to avoid confusing the reader with anything unusual, if only to avoid having to field the same newbie questions over and over.)
If the question is how to explain this to students, you may want to talk about how in software everything is changing all the time, and our objective is to make working software on time pressure that is good enough even though our knowledge is imperfect.
There's also an opportunity to talk about the ramifications of design decisions, comparing how in Java we have a differentiation between Strings and char arrays, and primitives and objects, unlike say in Haskell. So we have these design choices that cause odd corner cases and ugliness in the API, and the Java implementors can't just get rid of this cruft because of their concern for backward compatibility. Java is full of unintuitive edge cases, see Bloch and Gafter's puzzle book.
Often teachers (specifically grad students) are put in a situation where on short notice they have to teach a language that they've never used before. Textbook writers are working to get their book finished and may miss something occasionally. Sometimes the language has bizarre edge cases that it's not fair to expect everybody to know. Students have to adjust their expectations to these realities.
It's helpful in case your are concatenating it with a string. Ex:-
char [] array1 =
{'d','e','f','g','h','i'};
char [] array2 = new char[15];
System.arraycopy(array1, 3, array2, 0, 7);
System.out.println(new String(array1));
If You were to print Something array1content. Say "Hello defghi"
Incorrect Code
System.out.println("Something"+array1)); //"Something 'array type' as string and char array is being concatenated.
Correct code
System.out.println("Something"+new String(array1));
It's an example to show the use. Although the use of new String() is of no significance in your code.
In generall, new String(array2) is used to convert a char[] array into a String, with the same characters as in the array itsself.
Note that there are two overloaded variants of the println method defined, see java.io.PrintStream.println(char[] x) and java.io.PrintStream.println(String x), however, they result in the same behaviour, so you could omit the new String creation.
However, you should be aware of the difference.

Is use of AtomicInteger for indexing in Stream a legit way?

I would like to get an answer pointing out the reasons why the following idea described below on a very simple example is commonly considered bad and know its weaknesses.
I have a sentence of words and my goal is to make every second one to uppercase. My starting point for both of the cases is exactly the same:
String sentence = "Hi, this is just a simple short sentence";
String[] split = sentence.split(" ");
The traditional and procedural approach is:
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
for (int i=0; i<split.length; i++) {
if (i%2==0) {
stringBuilder.append(split[i]);
} else {
stringBuilder.append(split[i].toUpperCase());
}
if (i<split.length-1) { stringBuilder.append(" "); }
}
When want to use java-stream the use is limited due the effectively-final or final variable constraint used in the lambda expression. I have to use the workaround using the array and its first and only index, which was suggested in the first comment of my question How to increment a value in Java Stream. Here is the example:
int index[] = {0};
String result = Arrays.stream(split)
.map(i -> index[0]++%2==0 ? i : i.toUpperCase())
.collect(Collectors.joining(" "));
Yeah, it's a bad solution and I have heard few good reasons somewhere hidden in comments of a question I am unable to find (if you remind me some of them, I'd upvote twice if possible). But what if I use AtomicInteger - does it make any difference and is it a good and safe way with no side effects compared to the previous one?
AtomicInteger atom = new AtomicInteger(0);
String result = Arrays.stream(split)
.map(i -> atom.getAndIncrement()%2==0 ? i : i.toUpperCase())
.collect(Collectors.joining(" "));
Regardless of how ugly it might look for anyone, I ask for the description of possible weaknesses and their reasons. I don't care the performance but the design and possible weaknesses of the 2nd solution.
Please, don't match AtomicInteger with multi-threading issue. I used this class since it receives, increments and stores the value in the way I need for this example.
As I often say in my answers that "Java Stream-API" is not the bullet for everything. My goal is to explore and find the edge where is this sentence applicable since I find the last snippet quite clear, readable and brief compared to StringBuilder's snippet.
Edit: Does exist any alternative way applicable for the snippets above and all the issues when it’s needed to work with both item and index while iteration using Stream-API?
The documentation of the java.util.stream package states that:
Side-effects in behavioral parameters to stream operations are, in general, discouraged, as they can often lead to unwitting violations of the statelessness requirement, as well as other thread-safety hazards.
[...]
The ordering of side-effects may be surprising. Even when a pipeline is constrained to produce a result that is consistent with the encounter order of the stream source (for example, IntStream.range(0,5).parallel().map(x -> x*2).toArray() must produce [0, 2, 4, 6, 8]), no guarantees are made as to the order in which the mapper function is applied to individual elements, or in what thread any behavioral parameter is executed for a given element.
This means that the elements may be processed out of order, and thus the Stream-solutions may produce wrong results.
This is (at least for me) a killer argument against the two Stream-solutions.
By the process of elimination, we only have the "traditional solution" left. And honestly, I do not see anything wrong with this solution. If we wanted to get rid of the for-loop, we could re-write this code using a foreach-loop:
boolean toUpper = false; // 1st String is not capitalized
for (String word : splits) {
stringBuilder.append(toUpper ? word.toUpperCase() : word);
toUpper = !toUpper;
}
For a streamified and (as far as I know) correct solution, take a look at Octavian R.'s answer.
Your question wrt. the "limits of streams" is opinion-based.
The answer to the question (s) ends here. The rest is my opinion and should be regarded as such.
In Octavian R.'s solution, an artificial index-set is created through a IntStream, which is then used to access the String[]. For me, this has a higher cognitive complexity than a simple for- or foreach-loop and I do not see any benefit in using streams instead of loops in this situation.
In Java, comparing with Scala, you must be inventive. One solution without mutation is this one:
String sentence = "Hi, this is just a simple short sentence";
String[] split = sentence.split(" ");
String result = IntStream.range(0, split.length)
.mapToObj(i -> i%2==0 ? split[i].toUpperCase():split[i])
.collect(Collectors.joining(" "));
System.out.println(result);
In Java streams you should avoid the mutation. Your solution with AtomicInteger it's ugly and it's a bad practice.
Kind regards!
As explained in Turing85’s answer, your stream solutions are not correct, as they rely on the processing order, which is not guaranteed. This can lead to incorrect results with parallel execution today, but even if it happens to produce the desired result with a sequential stream, that’s only an implementation detail. It’s not guaranteed to work.
Besides that, there is no advantage in rewriting code to use the Stream API with a logic that basically still is a loop, but obfuscated with a different API. The best way to describe the idea of the new APIs, is to say that you should express what to do but not how.
Starting with Java 9, you could implement the same thing as
String result = Pattern.compile("( ?+[^ ]* )([^ ]*)").matcher(sentence)
.replaceAll(m -> m.group(1)+m.group(2).toUpperCase());
which expresses the wish to replace every second word with its upper case form, but doesn’t express how to do it. That’s up to the library, which likely uses a single StringBuilder instead of splitting into an array of strings, but that’s irrelevant to the application logic.
As long as you’re using Java 8, I’d stay with the loop and even when switching to a newer Java version, I would consider replacing the loop as not being an urgent change.
The pattern in the above example has been written in a way to do exactly the same as your original code splitting at single space characters. Usually, I’d encode “replace every second word” more like
String result = Pattern.compile("(\\w+\\W+)(\\w+)").matcher(sentence)
.replaceAll(m -> m.group(1)+m.group(2).toUpperCase());
which would behave differently when encountering multiple spaces or other separators, but usually is closer to the actual intention.

Manipulating Strings on Arrays

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!

Enhanced for loop shortcut

Is the following version of for loop possible (or a variation thereof fulfilling the purpose of shortening code with one line)?
for(String string: stringArray; string.toLowerCase()){
//stuff
}
Instead of
for(String string: stringArray){
string = string.toLowerCase();
//stuff
}
May seem like a stupid question but that one line is tiresome to write all the time when it applies to every element of the loop.
Write it like this
for(String string: stringArray)string=string.toLowerCase();
This is just as short. Also in a normal for loop for(int i=0;i<40;i++) you can use the comma operator to keep everything on one line
No, there isn't.
The trick with the enhanced-for loop is that it behaves like any other loop over a collection - you're working with the individual elements one at a time, as opposed to all at once.
Furthermore, since toLowerCase() returns a new String, as it should, it should only be called in situations where it's absolutely needed, as opposed to creating a new variable for that (unless you need it in more places, in which case it's better to move the lower-case functionality into those methods).
You should consider refactoring your code into several methods each with their own loops. One method creates a new array (or list) with transformed elements from the original list (such as applying toLowerCase() to the Strings in an array). The other methods process the new array rather than the original.
Unfortunately that's not possible. You could take a look at Google Guava, which has something like this (Predicates/Closures), but it doesn't help much in improving your code.
Cmpletely offtopic maybe, but it might help, if you would use Groovy, which is fully compatible with Java, it would be something like:
String[] stringArray = ["Lower", "Case"] as String[]
stringArray.collect { it.toLowerCase() }.each { item ->
println item
}
Which would print:
lower
case
But, like I said, this might not be a viable option in your case.
I don't think that's possible as of now. :)

How to use or implement arrays in XQuery?

Is there any built in support for array in XQuery? For example, if we want to implement
the simple java program in xquery how we would do it:
(I am not asking to translate the entire program into xquery, but just asking
how to implement the array in line number 2 of the below code to xquery? I am
using marklogic / xdmp functions also).
java.lang.String test = new String("Hello XQuery");
char[] characters = test.toCharArray();
for(int i = 0; i<characters.length; i++) {
if(character[i] == (char)13) {
character[i] = (char) 0x00;
}
}
Legend:
hex 0x00 dec 0 : null
hex 0x0d dec 13: carriage return
hex 0x0a dec 10: line feed
hex 0x20 dec 22: dquote
The problem with converting your sample code to XQuery is not the absence of support for arrays, but the fact that x00 is not a valid character in XML. If it weren't for this problem, you could express your query with the simple function call:
translate($input, '', '')
Now, you could argue that's cheating, it just happens so that there's a function that does exactly what you are trying to do by hand. But if this function didn't exist, you could program it in XQuery: there are sufficient primitives available for strings to allow you to manipulate them any way you want. If you need to (and it's rarely necessary) you can convert a string to a sequence of integers using the function string-to-codepoints(), and then take advantage of all the XQuery facilities for manipulating sequences.
The lesson is, when you use a declarative language like XQuery or XSLT, don't try to use the same low-level programming techniques you were forced to use in more primitive languages. There's usually a much more direct way of expressing the problem.
XQuery has built-in support for sequences. The function tokenize() (as suggested by #harish.ray) returns a sequence. You can also construct one yourself using braces and commas:
let $mysequence = (1, 2, 3, 4)
Sequences are ordered lists, so you can rely on that. That is slightly different from a node-set returned from an XPath, those usually are document-ordered.
On a side mark: actually, everything in XQuery is either a node-set or a sequence. Even if a function is declared to return one string or int, you can treat that returned value as if it is a sequence of one item. No explicit casting is necessary, for which there are no constructs in XQuery anyhow. Functions like fn:exists() and fn:empty() always work.
HTH!
Just for fun, here's how I would do this in XQuery if fn:translate did not exist. I think Michael Kay's suggestion would end up looking similar.
let $test := "Hello XQuery"
return codepoints-to-string(
for $c in string-to-codepoints($test)
return if ($c eq 32) then 44 else $c)
Note that I changed the transformation because of the problem he pointed: 0 is not a legal codepoint. So instead I translated spaces to commas.
With MarkLogic, another option is to use http://docs.marklogic.com/json:array and its associated functions. The json:set-item-at function would allow coding in a vaguely imperative style. Coding both variations might be a good learning exercise.
There are two ways to do this.
Firstly you can create an XmlResults object using
XmlManager.createResults(), and use XmlResults.add() to add your
strings to this. You can then use the XmlResults object to set the
value of a variable in XmlQueryContext, which can be used in your
query.
Example:
XmlResults values = XMLManager.createResults();
values.add(new XmlValue("value1"));
values.add(new XmlValue("value2"));
XmlQueryContext.setVariableValue("files", values);
The alternative is to split the string in XQuery. You
can do this using the tokenize() function, which works using a
regular expression to match the string separator.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-tokenize
Thanks.
A little outlook: XQuery 3.1 will provide native support for arrays. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-31/ for more details.
You can construct an array like this:
$myArray = tokenize('a b c d e f g', '\s')
// $myArray[3] -> c
Please note that the first index of this pseudo-array is 1 not 0!
Since the question "How to use or implement arrays in XQuery?" is being held generic (and thus shows up in search results on this topic), I would like to add a generic answer for future reference (making it a Community Wiki, so others may expand):
As Christian Grün has already hinted at, with XQuery 3.1 XQuery got a native array datatype, which is a subtype of the function datatype.
Since an array is a 'ordered list of values' and an XPath/XQuery sequence is as well, the first question, which may arise, is: "What's the difference?" The answer is simple: a sequence can not contain another sequence. All sequences are automatically flattened. Not so an array, which can be an array of arrays. Just like sequences, arrays in XQuery can also have any mix of any other datatype.
The native XQuery array datatype can be expressed in either of two ways: As [] or via array {}. The difference being, that, when using the former constructor, a comma is being considered a 'hard' comma, meaning that the following array consists of two members:
[ ("apples", "oranges"), "plums" ]
while the following will consist of three members:
array { ("apples", "oranges"), "plums" }
which means, that the array expression within curly braces is resolved to a flat sequence first, and then memberized into an array.
Since Array is a subtype of function, an array can be thought of as an anonymous function, that takes a single parameter, the numeric index. To get the third member of an array, named $foo, we thus can write:
$foo(3)
If an array contains another array as a member you can chain the function calls together, as in:
$foo(3)(5)
Along with the array datatype, special operators have been added, which make it easy to look up the values of an array. One such operator (also used by the new Map datatype) is the question mark followed by an integer (or an expression that evaluates to zero or more integers).
$foo?(3)
would, again, return the third member within the array, while
$foo?(3, 6)
would return the members 3 and 6.
The parenthesis can be left out, when working with literal integers. However, the parens are needed, to form the lookup index from a dynamic expression, like in:
$foo?(3 to 6)
here, the expression in the parens gets evaluated to a sequence of integers and thus the expression would return a sequence of all members from index position 3 to index position 6.
The asterisk * is used as wildcard operator. The expression
$foo?*
will return a sequence of all items in the array. Again, chaining is possible:
$foo?3?5
matches the previos example of $foo(3)(5).
More in-depth information can be found in the official spec: XML Path Language (XPath) 3.1 / 3.11.2 Arrays
Also, a new set of functions, specific to arrays, has been implemented. These functions resinde in the namespace http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions/array, which, conventionally, is being prefixed with array and can be found referenced in here: XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 3.1 / 17.3 Functions that Operate on Arrays

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