Problem with Scanner ?

[derekeverett]

Hi everybody!

I am brand new to Java and this is my first post here. This is my code for my attempt at a number guessing program. It runs the way I intended except for the part where it asks the user if they would like to continue.

I had intended for an answer of 'yes' to make the program play another game and have any other response terminate the program. This worked early on as I was building the program but as soon as I used Scanner for input of the users guess I ran into trouble.

Now when I run the program it plays the game fine once and asks the continue question but does not wait for a response from the user, and just terminates.

I am thinking the problem lies with my use of Scanner instance myScanner, Line 43. Can I not use this same instance of myScanner to get input for both the int guess and the continue game String?

import java.util.Scanner;
 
public class NumberGuess
{
	static Scanner myScanner = new Scanner(System.in);
 
	public static void main(String args[])
	{
		String userPlayAgainQuestion;
		int userGuess = 0;
 
		System.out.println("Welcome to Number Guess!\n");
 
		do
		{
			int secretNumber = ((int)(Math.floor(Math.random() * 10))) + 1;	// Generate random number between 1-10
 
			while((userGuess < 1) || (userGuess > 10))	// Loop until userGuess is valid int
			{
				System.out.print("Please enter your guess: ");
				userGuess = myScanner.nextInt();
 
				if((userGuess < 1) || (userGuess > 10))	// Check that userGuess is valid int
				{
					System.out.println("Guess must be between 1-10. Please try again.");
					continue;
				}
 
				if(userGuess == secretNumber)
				{
					System.out.println("You guessed it!! The number was " + userGuess + "!!");
				}
				else
				{
					System.out.println("Sorry the secret number was " + secretNumber + ".");
				}
 
			}
 
 
 
			System.out.print("Do you want to play again? Type \'yes\' to continue: ");
			userPlayAgainQuestion = myScanner.nextLine();	// Problem here??????					<- Line 43
 
		}while(userPlayAgainQuestion.equalsIgnoreCase("yes"));
 
		System.out.println("\n\nThanks for playing! See you soon.");
	}
}

[Darryl.Burke]

Scanner#nextInt doesn't consume the newLine, which remains in the scanner's buffer and is consumed when you next call Scanner#nextLine. You need a "dummy" nextLine to clear the buffer.

userGuess = myScanner.nextInt();
myScanner.nextLine();

db

[derekeverett]

Thank you.. exactly what I needed to know.

[derekeverett]

ok i have done as you suggested and soaked up the newline after the int is entered. This worked, the program now waits for the user to answer the "play again" question. However, now if the user answers "yes" it repeats the "play again" question over and over until the user enters something else and terminates the program.

I don't think there is an issue with my looping, is there still something I am not understanding about my Scanner usage?

[Darryl.Burke]

Well, considering that you're generating the random number inside the loop, it changes every time the loop repeats. Are you sure that's what you wanted?

db

[Faz]

It's because of this

while((userGuess < 1) || (userGuess > 10))

Your users guess is always going to be between 1 and 10 on the second loop through since you didn't reset it move the userGuess = 0 to inside the first loop to fix this.

Also I would change your second if to an else if to speed up the programme by a millisecond as it doesn't need to check it if it is outside the range.

EDIT:
Changing it to a do while would probably work aswell.

[derekeverett]

Thanks everyone. I needed to change the initialization to happen inside the do-while loop and everything is fine now.

I shall play with your other suggestions as well.