Question

Alright so here is my problem. Basically I have a string with 4 words in it, with each word seperated by a #. What I need to do is use the substring method to extract each word and print it out. I am having trouble figuring out the parameters for it though. I can always get the first one right, but the following ones generally have problems.
Here is the first piece of the code:

word = format.substring( 0 , format.indexOf('#') );

Now from what I understand this basically means start at the beginning of the string, and end right before the #. So using the same logic, I tried to extract the second word like so:

wordTwo = format.substring ( wordlength + 1 , format.indexOf('#') ); 
//The plus one so I don't start at the #.

But with this I continually get errors saying it doesn’t exist. I figured that the compiler was trying to read the first # before the second word, so I rewrote it like so:

wordTwo = format.substring (wordlength + 1, 1 + wordLength + format.indexOf('#') );

And with this it just completely screws it up, either not printing the second word or not stopping in the right place. If I could get any help on the formatting of this, it would be greatly appreciated. Since this is for a class, I am limited to using very basic methods such as indexOf, length, substring etc. so if you could refrain from using anything to complex that would be amazing!

Answer 1

If you have to use substring then you need to use the variant of indexOf that takes a start. This means you can start look for the second # by starting the search after the first one. I.e.

wordTwo = format.substring ( wordlength + 1 , format.indexOf('#', wordlength + 1 ) );

There are however much better ways of splitting a string on a delimiter like this. You can use a StringTokenizer. This is designed for splitting strings like this. Basically:

StringTokenizer tok = new StringTokenizer(format, "#");
String word = tok.nextToken();
String word2 = tok.nextToken();
String word3 = tok.nextToken();

Or you can use the String.split method which is designed for splitting strings. e.g.

String[] parts = String.split("#");
String word = parts[0];
String word2 = parts[1];
String word3 = parts[2];