Where to start, I am lost....

Question

I have no idea where to start on this exercise.

ConferenceRegistrationAssistant.java

public class ConferenceRegistrationAssistant {

  /**
   * Assists in guiding people to the proper line based on their last name.
   *
   * @param lastName The person's last name
   * @return The line number based on the first letter of lastName
   */
  public int getLineNumberFor(String lastName) {
    int lineNumber = 0;

    /*
      lineNumber should be set based on the first character of the person's last name
      Line 1 - A thru M
      Line 2 - N thru Z

     */
    return lineNumber;
  }

}

Example.java

public class Example {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    /*
      IMPORTANT:  You can compare characters using <, >. <=, >= and == just like numbers
     */
    if ('C' < 'D') {
      System.out.println("C comes before D");
    }

    if ('B' > 'A') {
      System.out.println("B comes after A");
    }

    if ('E' >= 'E') {
      System.out.println("E is equal to or comes after E");
    }

    // This code is here for demonstration purposes only...
    ConferenceRegistrationAssistant assistant = new ConferenceRegistrationAssistant();
    /*
      Remember that there are 2 lines.
      Line #1 is for A-M
      Line #2 is for N-Z
     */
    int lineNumber = 0;
    /*
      This should set lineNumber to 2 because
      The last name is Zimmerman which starts with a Z.
      Therefore it is between N-Z
     */
    lineNumber = assistant.getLineNumberFor("Zimmerman");

    /*
      This method call should set lineNumber to 1, because 'A' from "Anderson" is between A-M.
     */
    lineNumber = assistant.getLineNumberFor("Anderson");

    /*
      Likewise Charlie Brown's 'B' is between 'A' and 'M', so lineNumber should be set to 1
     */
    lineNumber = assistant.getLineNumberFor("Brown");
  }

}

Answer 1 · 2017-11-07T05:07:57Z

November 7, 2017 5:07am

Hi there Omar! For this exercise we want to take the input String that we are getting called lastName and check what the first letter is. To retrieve only the first letter we can use a method called charAt. We append the method onto the variable. lastName.charAt(0). We pass it a zero because that represents the first letter.

Now we want to check if its A-M or N-Z. For this we should use an if statement. Now in this exercise we know that if its not A-M its going to be N-Z, so we can just use an ELSE statement to make the code a little shorter:

 public int getLineNumberFor(String lastName) {
    int lineNumber = 0; //init var at 0

    if(lastName.charAt(0) < 'N') {       // < is not inclusive, so this covers A-M set var to 1
      lineNumber = 1;          
    } else { //Otherwise, if its N-Z set var to 2
      lineNumber = 2; 
   }

    return lineNumber; //Finally return this value of 1 or 2
  }

The variable lineNumber is what we want to set if these conditions are true, and at the end we return that value depending on what condition was met.

Hope this helps! happy coding :)

Answer 2 · 2017-11-07T06:20:40Z

November 7, 2017 6:20am

Thank you so much Michael, this really helped me out on what I was not understanding.

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Omar Ferrufino

Omar Ferrufino

Where to start, I am lost....

2 Answers

michaelcodes

michaelcodes

Omar Ferrufino

Omar Ferrufino