Limitation with Enhanced for loop on Character Array

Question

why much shorter solution can not be accepted? public int getCountOfLetter(char letter) { return tiles.length() - tiles.replaceAll(String.valueOf(letter), "").length();
}

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 tiles.length() - tiles.replaceAll(String.valueOf(letter), "").length();

  }
}

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 · 2017-10-30T22:05:27Z

October 30, 2017 10:05pm

Hi there, this is a very creative solution to the problem that was posed! There is nothing wrong with your answer and in practice that would be a fine way to accomplish this task. For the purposes of the code challenge they are just trying to get you to use the knowledge that you learned in the previous videos. So for this solution they are just looking for the plain old enchanced for loop solution:

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

Keep crushing it and happy coding!

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Sergey Nuyanzin

Sergey Nuyanzin

Limitation with Enhanced for loop on Character Array

1 Answer

michaelcodes

michaelcodes