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Java Java Objects Creating the MVP Counting Scrabble Tiles

Damjan Vlaic
Damjan Vlaic
19,244 Points
Posted by Damjan Vlaic
Damjan Vlaic
19,244 Points

---JAVA---

I've tried something down there in last method but it doesn't work, can someone give me a hand please? This is my problem:

You'll need to use your skills to loop through each of the tiles, use an equality check, and then increment a counter if the tile and letter match. You got this!

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.

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 (letter : tiles.toCharArray()) {
      if (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');
  }
}

2 Answers

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

You seems to be slightly confused about how a for loop works. It does not search for the existence of some item within a list and return -1 if the item does not exists, in the way the indexOf method does.

What it actually does is it pulls each item from the list you give it and then assigns them to a variable you define, as it runs the loop. The first time the loop runs it will pull out the first item, the second time it runs it will pull out the second item and so on.

That means that the variable you provide the for loop should not be an existing variable as it is in your code. It should be a new variable. And within the loop all you really need to do is compare the contents of this variable (which will end up containing each of the items in the tiles list) to the letter that was passed in. If they are the same then you can increase the letterCount variable.

Like this:

public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) {
    int letterCount = 0;
    for (char tile: tiles.toCharArray()) { // Pull out the tiles and assign them to tile
      if (letter == tile) { // Check if the individual tile is the same as the letter passed in.
        letterCount++;
      }
    }
    return letterCount;
}

That way each of the tiles in the tiles list will be compared to the letter passed in

Damjan Vlaic
Damjan Vlaic
19,244 Points
Damjan Vlaic
Damjan Vlaic
19,244 Points

ahaa I get you, tnx for helping :)