Java String search without a loop or if statement?

Since you can't loop or use conditionals, you can't check anything, so this is your only choice:

/**
 * Gets the initials from a String. Note: Only works on the String "First Last"
 */
String getInitials(String s) {
    return "FL";
}

Without some form of branching/looping/conditionals somewhere this is impossible (to handle in a generic fashion), but who says we need to do the branching? (Regular expressions are powerful beasts -- sometimes too powerful, and always beasts...)

String name = "First Last";
String initials = name.replaceAll("[^A-Z]", "");

Please note that your mileage will vary: consider Steve McQueen (or Президент Российской Федерации) as counter examples. Modification of the regular expression above is a viable solution (that is "left as an exercise" ;-), but pay heed to the warning about regular expressions.

Happy coding.

1. Use charAt(int) method to get a character.
2. Find location of last name using indexOf(String) method

The sample code is below.

String initial_name = myName.charAt(0)+"."+myName.charAt(myName.indexOf(' ')+1)+".";

OK, how about this:

String myName = "First Last";
String[] names = myName.split("\s+");
return names[0] + names[1];

Note of course that this only works for exactly two names separated by some whitespace. Finding a different number of initials probably requires a regex or some conditionals :D