Thread: How to Iterate through a string?

Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting on this forum, as i've only recently started studying java. I'm still learning the basics and I'm having difficulty trying to solve a certain problem from one of my worksheets.Here is the question.

Many word-processors can check spelling. One of the corrections applied is to swap 'e' for 'i' if 'i' occurs immediately before 'e' and immediately after 'c'. For example, concieve is corrected to conceive. Write a program that carries out this correction. That is, your program should read a string and print the corrected string (or the original string if no correction needed to be applied.)

First of all, I understand that these forums are to help, as oppose to giving people the exact answers so thats not why im posting it here. I'm just puzzled as to how to do this. I'm aware il need some sort of for loop and the charAt method to check the characters in the string, but how do I get the program to recognize if an 'i' comes before an 'e' and also how to swap those characters and return the correct spelling?

Thank you

Originally Posted by copeg

Take a look at the api for String, namely the replaceAll() method. You can loop through each rule and use this method to do the replacement

Sorry, but I'm still not sure how to do that. The exercise sheet gave a hint to use the charAt() method to go through each character of the string until it found an 'i' and then to check if the next letter after it was an 'e'. I'm still confused

Originally Posted by Stockholm Syndrome

Sorry, but I'm still not sure how to do that. The exercise sheet gave a hint to use the charAt() method to go through each character of the string until it found an 'i' and then to check if the next letter after it was an 'e'. I'm still confused

public class FindChars {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		String s = "find all ie sequencies or sequences?";
 
		int i = 0;
		// loop only till length()-1, since the last char is an 'i'
		// we will get an StringIndexOutOfBoundsException
		// note that charAt(i+1) is searched by default
		while (i < s.length()) {
			// if the char 'i' is found check if the next char is an 'e'
			if (s.charAt(i) == 'i' && s.charAt(i+1) == 'e' ) {
				System.out.println("ie found at position (zero-based) " + i );
			}
			i++;
		}
	}
}

I am sorry to point out you are missing a step here, if you replaceAll "ie" with "ei", you are not following the outline of the assignment, it is only after a 'c',

So i would loop through looking for a c, if you find a c, check the next two chars, if they are ei, fine, if they are ie, switch them. if you know the location of the i(followed by an e), you can do
array[iLoc] = 'e';
array[iLoc+1] = 'i';

Originally Posted by Zula

I am sorry to point out you are missing a step here, if you replaceAll "ie" with "ei", you are not following the outline of the assignment, it is only after a 'c',

So i would loop through looking for a c, if you find a c, check the next two chars, if they are ei, fine, if they are ie, switch them. if you know the location of the i(followed by an e), you can do
array[iLoc] = 'e';
array[iLoc+1] = 'i';

Thanks for your help i completely misunderstood the assignment. But we havnt been introduced to arrays yet at all so i really dont know how to use them & it also means the problem can be solved without them

My apologies, so maybe go through making a new string, you have used charAt yes?

String string = "string to check";
String outString = "";
for(int i = 0;i<string.length();i++) {
    outString+= string.charAt(i);
    if(string.charAt(i) == 'c') {
       if(string.charAt(i+1) == 'i' && string.charAt(i+2) == 'e') {
           outString+= "ei";
            i+=2;
        }
    }
}

perhaps?

Originally Posted by Zula

My apologies, so maybe go through making a new string, you have used charAt yes?

String string = "string to check";
String outString = "";
for(int i = 0;i<string.length();i++) {
    outString+= string.charAt(i);
    if(string.charAt(i) == 'c') {
       if(string.charAt(i+1) == 'i' && string.charAt(i+2) == 'e') {
           outString+= "ei";
            i+=2;
        }
    }
}

perhaps?

Yea this is much easier to understand, thanks a lot man