Scrambling a String

**Dylan035** · October 13th, 2010, 05:41 PM

Hello,

How can I scramble a given string in a random order?

for example, apple --> pelap

I cannot use any arrays.

Thanks for the help.

**helloworld922** · October 13th, 2010, 05:52 PM

that's kind of difficult since strings are basically just character arrays...

but none the less, what you could do is create a new string result, then randomly remove a letter from the original string and concatenate (add it to the end) of the result string. Repeat this process until the original string is empty.

**Dylan035** · October 13th, 2010, 06:10 PM

That is exactly what I was thinking. The part where I am running into a problem is this:

How can I randomly pick a character from a string without picking that same index again? Say I generate a random number to pick the index, how can I prevent that random number from being picked again?

I hope I'm being clear on my confusion.

Thanks again.

**helloworld922** · October 13th, 2010, 06:42 PM

Remove it from your original string. This is much easier to do with a StringBuilder because it is mutable where Strings are not.

// removing a letter from a StringBuilder
StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder("hello");
b.deleteCharAt(1); // remove the 2rd letter, which is e

**Dylan035** · October 13th, 2010, 07:45 PM

I see what you mean, I think that would work perfectly for what I need.

Let's say I have

String word = "bobcat";

How can I change 'word' from a String to a StringBuilder?

Could I do:

StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder(word); ?

**helloworld922** · October 13th, 2010, 08:33 PM

Yep, there's a StringBuilder constructor which takes a string.

If you're unsure about whether something is possible or not, there are 2 good courses of action:

1. Try it
2. Look at the Javadoc (StringBuilder JavaDoc)

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