Thread: How to find all the words of a certain length in a String and return them.

Hello!

What I need to do is given a input of a random text and a certain length,from the user I need to find all of the words in that text that have that length and return them. For example we input "I am having fun" and the user inputs 2, we should get "am" as a return.

import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
	public static String wordsOfLength(String words, int length) {
		int cnt = 0;
		String foundWords = "";
 
		for(int i = 0; i < words.length(); i++) {
			if(words.charAt(i) != ' ') {
				cnt++;
			}
		}
		for(int i = 0; i < words.length(); i++) {
			if(cnt == length) {
				foundWords += words.charAt(i);
			}
		}
		return foundWords;
	}
 
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Out.print("Please input a text:");
		String words = In.readString();
		Out.print("Please input a length:"); 
		int length = In.readInt();
		Out.println(wordsOfLength(words,length));
	}
}

This is my code an I am facing a problem where in the method that is suspossed to return the certain word,it just wont return the word.The return statements return the initalized foundWords at the very beggining and not the one after the for loop.I do not understand why this is so,some help would be great.

So my step by step solution

1.Read in the text and the length
2.Go through the text and find the length of the first word(than the second,third...)
3.Check if the length of the first word is the same as the desired length. If yes;
4.Add the charachters of the word into the a new string.
5.Return the new string which contains the word.

For debugging I've used the inteliJJ debugger but it didnt help,it simply tells me that all variables are initialized but not how or at what they contain at a certain point in time.

import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
	public static String wordsOfLength(String words, int length) {
		int cnt = 0;
		String foundWords = "";
		for(int i = 0; i < words.length(); i++) {
			if(words.charAt(i) != ' ') {
				cnt++;
			}
			Out.println(cnt);
		}
		for(int i = 0; i < words.length(); i++) {
			if(cnt == length) {
				foundWords += words.charAt(i);
			}
		}
		return foundWords;
	}
 
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Out.print("Please input a text:");
		String words = In.readString();
		Out.print("Please input a length:"); 
		int length = In.readInt();
		Out.println(wordsOfLength(words,length));
	}
}

When I input "q" it prints out only 1 which is correct, when I input "this is a text" it prints out this

1
2
3
4
4
5
6
6
7
7
8
9
10
11

it print out 2 times 4 and 6 because there is a ' ' and the count variable stays the same there.At those places is where the words are seperated.

11 is the count of the chars in the text.

Well I'm aware that the program,when it entcounters a white space it should register that we have found a word.Not really sure how to do that.

import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
	public static String[] splitString (String s) {
		return s.split (" ");
	}
 
	public static void wordsOfLength(String words,int length) {
		String[] split = splitString((words));
		for(int i=0; i <split.length; i++){
            if(split[i].length()== length){
                System.out.print(split[i]+", ");
            }
         }
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        System.out.print("Please input the text: ");  
        String words = In.readString();
		System.out.print("Please input the length:");
		int length = In.readInt();
        wordsOfLength(words,length);
    }
}

So I've got the code working,only thing is am printing the words out in a print statement and not returning them as value.Not sure how to incoperate that in this.

I can return them any way I would like,I'd prefer the easiest solution.

But what are my savedWords and what is my newWord? How do I "access" them ?

Getting this error test.java:14: error: cannot find symbol
return savedWords;
^
symbol: variable savedWords
location: class test
1 error

 
import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
	public static String[] splitString (String s) {
		return s.split (" ");
	}
 
	public static String wordsOfLength(String words,int length) {
		String[] split = splitString((words));
		for(int i=0; i <split.length; i++){
            if(split[i].length()== length){
                String savedWords = split[i] + " ";
            }
         }
		 return savedWords;
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        System.out.print("Please input the text: ");  
        String words = In.readString();
		System.out.print("Please input the length:");
		int length = In.readInt();
        Out.println(wordsOfLength(words,length));
    }
}

Quick edit:

I've declared the variable on class level and had to make it static.Definetly not the most elegant solution but it works.

 
import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
	static String foundWords = "";
 
	public static String[] splitString (String s) {
		return s.split (" ");
	}
 
	public static String wordsOfLength(String words,int length) {
		String[] split = splitString((words));
		for(int i=0; i <split.length; i++){
            if(split[i].length()== length){
                 foundWords += split[i] + " ";
            }
         }
		 return foundWords;
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        System.out.print("Please input the text: ");  
        String words = In.readString();
		System.out.print("Please input the length:");
		int length = In.readInt();
        Out.println(wordsOfLength(words,length));
    }
}

Oh okay,I didnt know I could do that.I'd assume this is the way

 
import java.util.Arrays;
public class test {
 
	public static String[] splitString (String s) {
		return s.split (" ");
	}
 
	public static String wordsOfLength(String words,int length) {
		String foundWords = "";
		String[] split = splitString((words));
		for(int i=0; i <split.length; i++){
            if(split[i].length()== length){
                 foundWords += split[i] + ",";
            }
         }
		 return foundWords;
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        System.out.print("Please input the text: ");  
        String words = In.readString();
		System.out.print("Please input the length:");
		int length = In.readInt();
        Out.println(wordsOfLength(words,length));
    }
}

It worked just fine.Is it not working on your end?

Thank you,and also thank you for your help!