I don't have a clue

Question

How shall I begin with? i don't seem to have a clue regarding this task.

I have been watching previous lecture a few times but still the same:(

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)
  {
    return 0;
  }
}

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 · 2017-01-01T04:35:07Z

January 1, 2017 4:35am

Now in your new method, have it return a number representing the count of tiles that match the letter that was passed in to the method. Make sure to check Example.java for some example uses.

In other words, you passed in a char (letter) and want to see how many times that letter is in tiles. Say for example I have the following tiles ("hdynbeejk"). I can then ask my getCountOfLetter() method how many times the letter "e" is in tiles and it will return 2.

If I did this in real life, I would take the letter and compare it to each letter in tiles. More specifically, I would compare my char (letter) to each char in the String (tiles). Remember, Strings are an array of Chars.

If you want to try this on your own, stop reading at this point.

To get started, I would use a for loop to loop through each of the tiles.

public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) {

    for (char tile : tiles.toCharArray()) {

    }

}

Notice I used a for each loop. That is, it will loop through each char in tiles and will use tile to refer to the specific char in tiles.

I would then see if my letter matches the tile.

public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) {

    for (char tile : tiles.toCharArray()) {
        if (tile == letter) {

        }
    }
}

If they do match, I would add 1 to my count. So let's create a counter.

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

Finally, we need to return the number of matches, or count.

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

Hope this helped explain the logic behind the answer. Thinking out a challenge and writing down the steps to how you would solve it in real life, before you begin to code, will often make a challenge easy to solve.

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