I don't understand what it says return "as an expression"

Question

I think I'm solving the problem, but I don't know how to resolve it as an expression. Also, What is the meaning of expression in coding?

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) {
   boolean result = tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;
    if (result == true){
      return true ;
  }
    else; {
    return false;
  }


  }

}

Answer 1 · 2017-11-06T07:45:15Z

November 6, 2017 7:45am

Hi there! an expression is basically a combination of variables, method calls, and\or logical operators. It is a very broad term. In the case of this example you have the expression here:

tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;

This is a boolean expression that will return either true or false, you were correct in assigning it to a boolean. However you dont need to then use an if statement to check if its true or false since the boolean handles that, we can just return the boolean variable result directly as such:

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

Since the method is declared as a boolean returning method, it is expecting to be returned a boolean, since it already knows this we can make the code cleaner and shorter by returning directly and not making a separate boolean variable:

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

Hope that helps!

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Juan Prieto

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I don't understand what it says return "as an expression"

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michaelcodes

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