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Java Java Objects Creating the MVP Scrabble Tiles

Posted by Eugene Paitoo
Eugene Paitoo
3,922 Points

Please whats the problem with my code

The Feedback i get is "while you could solve it using an if statement, try returning the result of the expression

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) {
    // TODO: Add the tile to tiles
    tiles += tile;
  }

  public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
    // TODO: Determine if user has the tile passed in
    boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != 1;
    if (isTile) {
      return isTile;
    } else {
      return false;
    }
  }

}

4 Answers

A Y
A Y
1,761 Points
A Y
A Y
1,761 Points

Hi Eugene,

You don't have to use the if conditional statement here as your return from boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != 1; is true/false already so just typr return isTile; and it will work.

Change these: boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != 1; if (isTile) { return isTile; } else { return false; }

To: boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1; return isTile;

And it will work.

Regrds, Amir

Samuel Ferree
Samuel Ferree
31,722 Points
Samuel Ferree
Samuel Ferree
31,722 Points

Your hasTile method can be shortened

public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
  boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != 1; //Sidenote: I think this should be -1, not 1
  return isTile
}

It can be shortened further (and correctly imo)

public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
  return tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;
}
Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
STAFF
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher
Jennifer Nordell
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi there! While you could do it the way you are doing it, it's generally considered less readable. Ideally, we want to avoid a situation where we have something like "if this is true return true" and "if it's false return false". We'd want it to read more like "return whether or not this is true or false". Let's take an example. Imagine that we want to return true if a number is greater than 10 or false if it's not. We could do it like this:

int myNumber = 20;

if(myNumber > 10) {
  return true;
} else {
   return false;
}

But it's much shorter and more readable to return the evaluation of the expression directly as it can only be true or false. So we could write the same thing this way:

int myNumber = 20;

return myNumber > 10;

It's going to run the evaluation of myNumber > 10 which will have a boolean value of true or false. We then immediately return the result of that evaluation.

Your code is doing the evaluation just fine, but you can return it in this same manner without all the extra stuff. So you can remove the if else statements, and you don't even need the isTile variable. Simply replacing boolean isTile = with return and erasing all the if and else will cause the challenge to pass!

Hope this helps! :sparkles:

Eugene Paitoo
Eugene Paitoo
3,922 Points
Eugene Paitoo
Eugene Paitoo
3,922 Points

Thanks so much for your input