Having trouble with this method. Return a count of letters in the tiles.

Question

Can not get the code to work.

ScrabblePlayer.java

public class ScrabblePlayer {
  // A String representing all of the tiles that this player has
  private String tiles;

  public ScrabblePlayer() {
    tiles = "";
  }

  public String getTiles() {
    return tiles;
  }

  public void addTile(char tile) {
    tiles += tile;
  }

  public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
    return tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;
  }

  public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) {
    int letterCount = 0;
             for (char tile : tiles.toCharArray()) {
                     if (tiles.indexOf(letter) != -1) {
                           letterCount++; }
             return letterCount;}
  }
}

Example.java

// This code is here for example purposes only
public class Example {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    ScrabblePlayer player1 = new ScrabblePlayer();
    player1.addTile('d');
    player1.addTile('d');
    player1.addTile('p');
    player1.addTile('e');
    player1.addTile('l');
    player1.addTile('u');

    ScrabblePlayer player2 = new ScrabblePlayer();
    player2.addTile('z');
    player2.addTile('z');
    player2.addTile('y');
    player2.addTile('f');
    player2.addTile('u');
    player2.addTile('z');

    int count = 0;
    // This would set count to 1 because player1 has 1 'p' tile in her collection of tiles
    count = player1.getCountOfLetter('p');
    // This would set count to 2 because player1 has 2 'd'' tiles in her collection of tiles
    count = player1.getCountOfLetter('d');
    // This would set 0, because there isn't an 'a' tile in player1's tiles
    count = player1.getCountOfLetter('a');

    // This will return 3 because player2 has 3 'z' tiles in his collection of tiles
    count = player2.getCountOfLetter('z');
    // This will return 1 because player2 has 1 'f' tiles in his collection of tiles
    count = player2.getCountOfLetter('f');
  }
}

Answer 1 · 2017-02-28T13:59:12Z

February 28, 2017 1:59pm

The problem with your code logic wise is that let's say that there are 5 tiles in the tiles array and the letter passed in is in fact present somewhere in the array. With your code that would result in the letterCount equaling 5 after the loop, regardless of whether there actually are 5 instances of said tile.

This is due to the fact that in your loop you are not checking if the individual tiles in the array are equal to the passed in letter. You are just checking if it is present at all anywhere in the array. And you are doing this one time for each tile in the array.

The point of a for loop like you are using is that it automatically pulls out the individual items you need to compare without you having to do anything too complicated yourself. The individual item will just exist within the loop within the tile variable.

If you ever write a for loop where you don't actually use the variable the for loop generates that's a pretty good indication that you are doing something incorrectly, as you are ignoring the key element that makes for loops useful.

Anyway the code you need within the for loop for this task is actually pretty simple. Simpler than the code you have at present in fact. All you need to do is compare the individual tiles from the tile array (which you have access to in the tile variable) to the answer variable. And then increasing the count if they equal each other.

It's also worth mentioning that your for loop is missing an ending bracket } which is also part of why your code is not passing.

Taking all of that into account you end up with this code:

public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) {
    int letterCount = 0;
    for (char tile : tiles.toCharArray()) {
        if (tile == letter) {
            letterCount++; 
        }
    }
    return letterCount;
}

Edit: Accidentally pasted the wrong code.

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keith tellis

keith tellis

Having trouble with this method. Return a count of letters in the tiles.

1 Answer

andren

andren