Sorting Strings in an Array by Char

Question

I'm trying to sort a list of strings in array into alphabetical order without using the sort method.

public static String[] sortedAdjectives(String[] original)
{
    String[] sortedArray;
    int aValue = 65;
    String word = "";
    sortedArray = new String[25];
    for(int i = 0; i <25; i++)
    {
        original[i]=word;
        char c = word.charAt(0);
        sortedArray[c-aValue]=word;

    }
    return sortedArray;

Is my method, and

public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {
        Scanner names = new Scanner(new File("names.txt"));
        Scanner adjectives = new Scanner(new File("adjectives.txt"));
        String[] adjectiveArray;
        adjectiveArray = new String[25];
        int counter = 0;
        while (counter<25)
        {
            String in = adjectives.next();
            fixCapitalization(in); //method that fixes capitalization
            adjectiveArray[counter]=in;
            counter++;
        }
        sortedAdjectives(adjectiveArray);

Is where I put the items from the file into an array. I'm getting

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 0
    at java.lang.String.charAt(Unknown Source)
    at Hmwk.sortedAdjectives(Hmwk.java:56)
    at Hmwk.main(Hmwk.java:24)

When I try to run my program and I can't figure out where I'm going wrong. If you could point me in the right direction i'd be much appreciative. Thanks for your time.

In your sort method, word is the empty string. You're overwriting all values of your input array with this, and trying to access a character that doesn't exist. — Michelle
– Michelle, Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 19:38
You are making many assumptions about your input strings (several wrong , like the assumption that there are only 25 adjectives. You strategy should be to implement a method that sorts an array of Strings and call that. — ErstwhileIII
– ErstwhileIII, Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 19:49

ltalhouarne · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-10 19:38:42Z

3

You have word initialized as an empty string:

String word = "";

Then you are calling charAt(0) on an empty string. Can't do that. Your string needs to be at least longer than 1 character in order to call that method.

answered Mar 10, 2014 at 19:38

ltalhouarne

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3 Comments

Luiggi Mendoza Over a year ago

Apart of this, it would be better to add that since Strings are immutable, calling method fixCapitalization should return a String and its value should replace the value of in, unless this method modifies the String interns (which would be really odd).

user102817 Over a year ago

But wouldn't original[i]=word; make word equal to the item at the index of 0?

ltalhouarne Over a year ago

No, you have to use word = original[i] instead. With original[i]=word you are assigning the value of word to original[i].

user2502941 · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-10 19:50:46Z

0

You made a little mistake in the for loop. It should probably be word = original[i]; which you did it inversely and makes the word never take the original parameter as reference.

Also a few things to improve here: using arraylist would have better extensibility and avoid erasing repetitive letters.

answered Mar 10, 2014 at 19:50

user2502941

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