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Java Java Objects Creating the MVP Scrabble Tiles

Posted by eliamani seushi
eliamani seushi
5,782 Points

returning the result of the expression that uses the index of a char in a String.

tiles.indexOf(tile) should return -1 and hence false if char tile is not inside String tiles,elsewise true as the function hasTiles is meant to return a boolean variable,i dont see why the code isng not worki

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
    int result=tiles.indexOf(tile);
    /*
    if(result>=1)
    {
    return true;
    }
    else
    {
      return false;
    }
    */
    return result;
  }

}

1 Answer

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

If this was coded in JavaScript, Python, PHP or something like that then that might work, but Java is not a language that translates non-Booleans to a Boolean automatically. -1 is not equivalent to false, it is equal to -1 and nothing else. Java is a very strict language as far as type conversion is concerned.

When you state that your function returns a Boolean it needs to return an actual Boolean, not an int. So in this case you need to use a comparison to have your code actually return a Boolean. Like this:

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) 
  {
    // Check that `indexOf` does not return -1 and return the Boolean that comparison produces
    return tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1; 
  }
}