Stuck for days

Question about the task

Shortest or longest

Java Syntax, Level 7, Lesson 6

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Hello, I have been stuck for days on this question pleas help me identify my problems. thanks in advance!

1. Create a list of strings.
2. Add 10 strings from the keyboard.
3. Find out which string occurs earlier in the list: the shortest or the longest.
If several strings are shortest or longest, then consider the very first such string encountered.
4. Display the string described in Step 3. One string should be displayed.

Requirements:

Declare a string list variable and immediately initialize it.
The program should read 10 strings from the keyboard and add them to the list.
The program should display the shortest string if it comes before the longest.
The program should display the longest string if it comes before the shortest.

package com.codegym.task.task07.task0712; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.ArrayList; /* Shortest or longest */ public class Solution { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); ArrayList<String> strList = new ArrayList<String>(); for (int i= 0; i<10; i++){ String str = reader.readLine(); strList.add(str); } String shortestString = strList.get(0); String longestString = strList.get(0); for (int i = 0; i<strList.size(); i++){ if (strList.get(i).length() >= longestString.length()) { longestString = strList.get(i); /*System.out.println(longestString); break;*/ } else if (strList.get(i).length() != longestString.length() && (strList.get(i).length() < longestString.length())) { shortestString = strList.get(i); //System.out.println(shortestString); } if (shortestString.length() == strList.get(i).length()){ System.out.println(shortestString); break; } else{ System.out.println(longestString); break; } } } }

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Valeri Burlacu

Level 15 , Bamberg, Germany

17 March 2020, 08:16

useful

Hallo Michael Brimage. So, first, you must understand the problem. We have for example: [22,999999999,7777777,666666,1,88888888,22] Longest is: 999999999 from position 2 Shortest is: 1 from position 5 The String the very first such string encountered is from position 2. You must read the strings and calculate the length of the string and assign to Longest or Shortest + memorize the position of the string. After this show the string from the lower position ;) Good luck!

Guadalupe Gagnon

Level 37 , Tampa, United States

9 March 2020, 15:15

Up until line 24 your code looks great. After that there would be 3 pieces of information that I would try to gather to finish solving this: 1) the greatest string length 2) the shortest string length 3) which one of the above occurs first. The above code does not get the first two items before it attempts to solve the third item, and it results in the first word of the list being output every single time. The logic between lines 28-39 is good, but the output logic, lines 40-47, needs to be moved to another location that is after longest and shortest are discovered.

Guadalupe Gagnon

Level 37 , Tampa, United States

9 March 2020, 15:19

Here is a handy tip for testing code like this. I comment out lines 15-22 and add this instead:

String[] temp = "the dog is the cat's best friend and best companion".split(" ");
ArrayList<String> strList = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(temp));

Now I can test your code by just hitting the run button and it just runs without me having to enter 10 values every single time. You can change the first line to any sentence that you want to change the values in list to try out different conditions. Make sure that you comment these lines out and uncomment the other lines before attempting to validate.