Question

I am trying to create a program which will substitute a character in place of another. I have created two arrays, odd and even as follows:

char[] odd = { 'a', 'c', 'e', 'g', 'i', 'k', 'm', 'o', 'q', 's', 'u', 'w', 'y' };
char[] even ={ 'b', 'd', 'f', 'h', 'j', 'l', 'n', 'p', 'r', 't', 'v', 'x', 'z' };

Now, if the input is ‘a’, it has to put ‘b’ and if the input is ‘b’, it has to print ‘a’.

So i thought it is best to match the index of both the arrays since they have equal count. the basic idea is this :

the input is ‘a’, so the compiler takes the index of ‘a’ – 0 into account and substitutes the value at even with the index 0 – ‘b’.

so I thought of assigning a spare character ‘j’, which will find the index of the input and outputs the corresponding character from the array – even[].

I tried few times but could not get a solution. Kindly help me in this…

This is what I have tried.

The desired input maybe like this : Hello
The desired output should be this: Gfkkp

This supposedly gives me the desired result.

private void superSecretFormula(string myName)  
{
    string read = myName;
    int count = read.Length;

    char[] odd = { 'a', 'c', 'e', 'g', 'i', 'k', 'm', 'o', 'q', 's', 'u', 'w', 'y' };
    //char[] j;

    char[] even = { 'b', 'd', 'f', 'h', 'j', 'l', 'n', 'p', 'r', 't', 'v', 'x', 'z' };
    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < 13 ; j++)
        {
            if (read[i]==odd[j])
            {
                int k = j;
                textBlock1.Text = textBlock1.Text + Convert.ToString(char.ToUpperInvariant(even[k]));
            }
            if (read[i] == even[j])
            {
                int k = j;
                textBlock1.Text = textBlock1.Text + Convert.ToString(char.ToUpperInvariant(odd[k]));
            }
        }
    }
}

Kindly comment on the quality and approach in solving this problem, as I am a newbie and I am starting to learn code only now. Thanks

Answer 1

Assuming all your substitutions are unique I would consider changing your structure to something like this to ease the usage.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var subs = new Substitutes {{'a', 'b'}, {'c', 'd'}};

        Console.WriteLine(subs['a']); //Prints b
        Console.WriteLine(subs['b']); //Prints a
    }

    class Substitutes : Dictionary<char, char>
    {
         public new void Add(char item, char substitute)
         {
             base.Add(item, substitute);
             base.Add(substitute, item);
         }
    }
}

Now substituting all chars in a string would be trivial by just checking if the key exists.