Very basic program but its making me crazy

First post , hello

I'm new to java and I'm trying to get this basic program working to find the shortest word in a string.
for some reason when it runs it will always declare the last word entered in the string as being the shortest word , regardless how many letters are in it or if its a word or an integer entered.

Can anyone see what im doing wrong?

Code Java:

---

                String  sentence; 
		String  shortestword;
		String  word;
		int       spacePos;
 
		shortestword = "";
 
		System.out.print("Please enter a sentence: ");
		sentence = getString();
 
			do{
 
 
				spacePos = sentence.indexOf(" ");
 
 
				if (spacePos == -1)
 
			{
					word = sentence;
 
			} 
 
				else
 
				{
 
				word = sentence.substring(0,spacePos);
				sentence = sentence.substring(spacePos +1);
 
                }
 
 
				if(word.length() > shortestword.length())
 
 
			{
				   shortestword = word;
			}
 
 
			   }
 
			   while (spacePos != -1);
 
			   System.out.println("The shortest word is " + word)

---

When posting code, make sure you use the code or highlight tags to preserve formatting. Also, make sure it's in the form of an SSCCE (that's a link).

But have you tried putting in some print statements to figure out what's going on? Or better yet, have you tried running through this with a debugger?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

When posting code, make sure you use the code or highlight tags to preserve formatting. Also, make sure it's in the form of an SSCCE (that's a link).

But have you tried putting in some print statements to figure out what's going on? Or better yet, have you tried running through this with a debugger?

---

hi Kevin

added the code tags

It compiles and runs fine in j-creator, it's just outputting the wrong answer and I cant for the life of me figure out why , this might sound naive but whats a debugger?

From my point of view, Debugger might be over the top for a beginner but that's not here or there.
Problems in your program are very small, and once you spot them, it will take seconds to adjust.
I recommend checking out:

• Equality and Relational Operators
• And secondly, just proof read your code, think carefully about what you're trying to print, where and why.

thanks for the help ,ill go back in on it now , you would laugh if you knew how long i have been plugging away at this and i just know its something very simple :)

Deeply sorry, Posted advice without checking it on my own System! Although suggestions I pointed towards were needed, It was not a clear-cut (Quote: Few second Job) like I said.

Look into the split method of the String class:
String (Java 2 Platform SE v1.4.2)

By splitting up your sentence, and storing it into a String Array, you can easily go through the array comparing lengths with only a fraction of your code.

The parameter of split() is something you consider to be a good checkpoint to split the string, such as : or a whitespace.

Click here for details on for loops
Click here for an example of String.split() in action.

Again, very sorry for not checking my post before saying It was a 2 second job for you :P