Does this work?

[marmanq]

I'm new to java programming and I have been reading a java how to book. At the end of each chapters there are challenges and one of the challenges was to:
"Write an application that reads in a user's sentence of unknown, possibly mixed upper and lowercase letters, capitalizes the first letter of the sentence, makes all other letters lowercase, and makes sure there is a period at the end of the sentence."
Can you tell me if this code fits the description above?


/*
* MGramChecker
*/

import java.io.*;
public class MGramChecker {
public static void main(String args[]){
String userSent = " ";
String corrSent = " ";


read = BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System));
System.out.print("What's your sentence you need corrected?");
try {
userSent = reader.readLine();
}
catch (IOException ioe) {
System.out.println("I/O Exception Occured");
}
corrSent = userSent.toUpperCase(charAt(0)) + userSent.toLowerCase(charAt(1-....));
//See the line above. Its suppose to take the user's sentence. Then go to the first character and put it
// in upper case. Then its suppose to take the rest of the sentence and put it in lower case.
System.out.println("Here is your corrected sentence:" + corrSent + ".");
System.out.println("Your Welcome");
}

}


Obviously I'm not going to color those two lines red, but that's really what I have questions with. Thanks for the help.

[pbrockway2]

The best - in fact the only - way to see "if it works" is to test the program and see if it gives the correct output.

Try and cover as many possibilities as you can with your test cases: all upper case letters, all lower case letters, an empty string (if you allow that), strings ending with a period, strings not ending with a period, ...

-----

One small point that probably won't be revealed with testing is that you catch an exception, but then carry on as if nothing was wrong. Also you print a fairly "plain" message. That's OK for the end user perhaps (although they're much more impressed with "Error code 4665. If the problem persists please see your system administrator") - but while you develop the program you probably ought to print out the whole stack trace:

catch(IOException ioe) {
    ioe.printStackTrace();
    System.exit(1);
}

[marmanq]

So I found an online compiler and when I tried to run the program it said "illegal start of expression." It says that occurred on line 20 column 76 which is:
corrSent = userSent.toUpperCase(charAt(0)) + userSent.toLowerCase(charAt(1-....));
I put that in there so it would go from the second character through "...." or the rest of the sentence, but is "...." even code? If not what could I put there that would tell the machine to skip the first character and make every other letter lower case?

[Norm]

Can you get the full text of the error message? If so, post it.
Does it have a line number or show the source line with the problem?

[marmanq]

Yeah, I just added that to my response above. Post #3. It was line 20 and column 76. Thanks for the help.

[marmanq]

So I changed my code to:

/*
* MGramChecker
*/

import java.io.*;
public class MGramChecker {
public static void main(String args[]){
String userSent = " ";
String corrSent = " ";
int numLetters;

read = BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System));
System.out.print("What's your sentence you need corrected?");
try {
userSent = reader.readLine();
}
catch (IOException ioe) {
System.out.println("I/O Exception Occured");
}
corrSent = userSent.toUpperCase(charAt(0)) + userSent.toLowerCase(charAt(1-int numLetters));
//See the line above. Its suppose to take the user's sentence. Then go to the first character and put it
// in upper case. Then its suppose to take the rest of the sentence and put it in lower case.
System.out.println("Here is your corrected sentence:" + corrSent + ".");
System.out.println("Your Welcome");
}

}


But now I get 2 errors:
Program.java LINE: 20 COL: 80 '.class' expected
Error Program.java LINE: 20 COL: 91 ';' expected

How do I get rid of those?

[Norm]

Please Edit your post and wrap your code with
[code=java]
<YOUR CODE HERE>
[/code]
to get highlighting
Your unformatted code is very hard to read.

Where is line 20?

[marmanq]

/*
* MGramChecker
*/
 
import java.io.*;
public class MGramChecker {
public static void main(String args[]){
String userSent = " ";
String corrSent = " ";
int numLetters;
 
read = BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System));
System.out.print("What's your sentence you need corrected?");
try {
userSent = reader.readLine();
}
catch (IOException ioe) {
System.out.println("I/O Exception Occured");
}
corrSent = userSent.toUpperCase(charAt(0)) + userSent.toLowerCase(charAt(1-int numLetters));
//Line 20 is the line above. See the line above. Its suppose to take the user's sentence. 
//Then go to the first character and put it in upper case. Then its suppose to take 
//the rest of the sentence and put it in lower case.
System.out.println("Here is your corrected sentence:" + corrSent + ".");
System.out.println("Your Welcome");
}
 
}

[Norm]

int is a keyword and it looks out of place on line 20.

[Mr.777]

And is this the whole code? Or there is something else? If this is the all, then you are missing a lot of things and compiler must generate bunch of errors.

[marmanq]

so can I just remove int and leave numLetters or do I have to add something else? Also this is all of my code, but I only get two errors when compiling:
Program.java LINE: 20 COL: 80 '.class' expected
Error Program.java LINE: 20 COL: 91 ';' expected

[Norm]

What value do you want to pass to the charAt() method here?
userSent.toLowerCase(charAt(1-int numLetters));

[marmanq]

I would like it to skip the first character and make every other character in the sentence lowercase. That's why I put 1-int numLetters. I was hoping that would go from 1- then insert the number of characters in the sentence, so the compiler would know how many to make lowercase.

[Norm]

What value do you want in the charAt() method call?
It must be a value from 0 to the length of the String -1.
The expression: (1 - XXX) will be 0 when XXX is 1 and it will be less than zero when XXX is greater than 1.
The charAt() method requires a value >= 0.

so the compiler would know

You must specify exactly the value for the charAt() method. The compiler does NOT know what you want to do.
You must tell it exactly what you want to do.

[marmanq]

I'm sorry, i'm having trouble understanding. The program is suppose to allow the user to type in a random sentence of any length and then its suppose to make all the letters (not including the first) lower case. that's why I put int numletters.
So are you saying that if I put charAt (1-XXX) it will make all the letters, except the first, lower case?

[Norm]

charAt (1-XXX) was an example of code that I used to explain how to use the method. It is not for you to use in your code.

You need to look at the letters one at a time (in a loop??) and test/change them as you want the program to work.

Look at using the substring method to get the parts of the String that you need to handle.
How many parts of the String do you need to work one? What do you want to do to each part?

[marmanq]

So I just came up with a new idea/question. Could I make a new string called String userSentLength and tell the compiler for that string to read the user's random sentence for the length. Then I could put charAt(1-userSentLength) ?

[Norm]

charAt(1-userSentLength)
What do you expect that method call to do?
You need to read the API doc for that method to see what it does!!!
Java Platform SE 6