Question

Hey i’m having problems creating a simple button for a programme which finds the largest word in an array and puts it into a textbox. I’ve done most of the coding (I hope) was wondering if somebody could help me actually with the code that finds the largest text in the array as I am struggling the most with that.

    Private Sub btnLongName_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnLongName.Click         Dim LongName As String         Dim LengthOfLongestName As Integer         Dim UltimateName As String           For i As Integer = 0 To 5             LongName = Members(i).Name             LengthOfLongestName = Len(LongName)             If Members(i).Name.Length > LengthOfLongestName Then                End If         Next i          txtResult.Text = 'The longest name is ' & UltimateName & ' .'     End Sub End Class 

Thanks for your time – its for college homework, struggling big time on it 🙁

edit: I’ve edited the code

Answer 1

Since this is homework, I won’t write the code for you; instead I’ll try to give you some hints that will point you in the right direction.

1. Declare a variable of an appropriate type to hold the <longest value so far>, initialize it with the ‘shortest’ value for that type.
2. Loop through all the values in the array (perhaps with a For or For Each loop)

Pseudo-code for the inside your loop:

If the Length of <the value being checked> exceeds _    the Length of the <longest value so far> Then      Assign <the value being checked> to the <longest value so far>   End If 

When the loop finishes, the <longest value so far> will be the longest value in the array.

Notes

• You can use MSDN as a reference on how to use a For loop or a For Each loop (If you haven’t learned For loops yet, you can also use a Do Loop)
• <the value being checked> will be different on each iteration through the loop; it should correspond to each consecutive value in your array. You can verify that this is working by setting a breakpoint.
• You can get the length of a string by saying myString.Length
• If you’ve learned about Functions, consider writing a function that takes an array as a parameter, and returns the longest value in the array.
• There are certainly ways you could do this with LINQ, but I don’t think that is the goal of the assignment ;-]

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In response to Edit 1:

• Your If statement needs to be inside of some sort of loop (For, For Each, Do, etc) I think this is the key concept that you are missing.
• Instead of comparing LongName.Length to LengthOfLongestName, you need to compare the length of an entry in your array to LengthOfLongestName
• You’re on the right track with Members(0).Name.Length, but you can’t just check element 0; you have to check every element in the array.
• Given your current code, you’ll probably be assigning <An entry in your array>.Name to LongName
• The last index in a one-dimensional array is <array>.Length - 1 or <array>.GetUpperBound(0).

The following doesn’t really address anything in your assignment, but I hope it will give you some ideas on how to go through all the items in your list:

' A For loop that does a message box for each of the numbers from 0 to 5 ' For i as Integer = 0 To 5    MessageBox.Show(i) Next i  ' Code that does a message box with the names of the 2nd, 3rd and last ' ' entries in Members ' ' (Remember that the first item is at 0, the second item is at 1, etc...) ' MessageBox.Show(Members(1).Name) MessageBox.Show(Members(2).Name) MessageBox.Show(Members(Members.GetUpperBound()).Name) 

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In response to Edit 2:

You’re getting warmer…

• You should only update LongName and LengthOfLongName if the current value is the longest you’ve seen so far (i.e. they should be assigned inside of the If statement)
• You have to go to the last index of the array, not 5. See above (the response to your first edit) on how to get that last index.
• You don’t really need the UltimateName variable; you can just use LongName ;-]
• You might want to use <stringVariable>.Length instead of Len(<stringVariable>) to be consistent.