Thread: Choosing a bibliography style, Beginner Programmer question.

I am enrolled in an Intro to Computer Programming class, however my knowledge about computer programming is very slim and my professor isn't exactly the best at teaching. He has given us a homework assignment that I believe is about creating a java program to cite articles. I have NO idea where to start so any help would be greatly appreciated.

This is the homework:

due Feb 14, 11am...
(biblio.java) assignment
The primary purposes of this assignment are
1. to get used to String class operations.
2. to get used to switch conditional statement.
The secondary purpose is to get used to bibliography styles.

Your program must prompt users to choose the style of bibliography types (a for ACM, i for IEEE, l for LNCS, all others for default style).
Your program then must print the correct style.
e.g., suppose you want to cite the following article
http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/pubs/papers/scicomp01.pdf

Inputs:
Author1 = "Henk J. Sips";
Author2 = Kees van Reeuwijk";
TITLE = "Java for Scientific Computation: Prospects and Problems"
booktitle = "LSSC'01"
PAGES = "236-246"
YEAR = 2001

Then based on the user's choice, your program must print

ACM:
Sips, H.J. and Reeuwijk, K.V. Java for Scientific Computation: Prospects and Problems. In Proceedings of LSSC. 2001, 236-246.

IEEE:
H.J. Sips and K.V. Reeuwijk, "Java for Scientific Computation: Prospects and Problems", in Proc. LSSC, 2001, pp.236-246.

LNCS:
Sips, H.J., Reeuwijk, K.V.: Java for Scientific Computation: Prospects and Problems. In LSSC(2001) 236-246

default:
Henk J. Sips, Kees van Reeuwijk. Java for Scientific Computation: Prospects and Problems. In Proceedings of LSSC'2001. pp.236~246

===================
1. must use the String methods you learned in class.
2. must use the switch conditional statements.

Thank you for your help!
I believe I have a hang of the switch classes and scanner objects.

I am trying to allow the program to ask the user for inputs in Author, Title, Title 2, etc. before they choose a bibliography style type but I am confused as to how I can do that. I assume the correct way of doing the assignment would be to ask the users for their inputs and then based on their bibliography choice output a line with the style they chose.

Correct?

Alright, thank you for your advice.
I didn't do the string.split() method since we haven't learned that in class yet.

But I'm getting an error that I'm unfamiliar with

import java.util.Scanner;
 
class biblio {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
 
				String author1;
				String author2;
				String TITLE;
				String booktitle;
				String pages;
				String year;
				String input;
				char style;
				Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
 
				System.out.print("Author 1: ");
				author1 = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("Author 2: ");
				author2 = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("Title: ");
				TITLE = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("Book number: ");
				booktitle = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("Pages: ");
				pages = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("Year Published: ");
				year = keyboard.nextLine();
 
				System.out.print("\nA = ACM\nI = IEEE\nL = LNCS\n\nNo choice will result in default style\nChoose a bibliography style: ");
				input = keyboard.nextLine();
				style = input.chatAt(0);
 
				switch(style)
				{
					case 'a':
					case 'A':
						System.out.print(author1 + " and " + author2 + ". " + TITLE + ". " + "In proceedings of " + booktitle + ". " + year + ", " + pages + "." );
				}
	}
}

But I'm getting this error:

biblio.java:37: cannot find symbol
symbol  : method chatAt(int)
location: class java.lang.String
				style = input.chatAt(0);
				             ^
1 error

Wow, for some reason I keep typing that over and over. I can't believe I didn't catch that!
Thank you.