Question

I have a method that should scan for one of 3 letters in caps or lowercase and return the lower case version of the letter. If an improper letter is entered the user is warned and reasked for a letter. I have two issues, 1: as soon as the method is run I get the outputted line with the error message telling the user invalid entry without waiting for an entry! (so the second the method is run I see High, low or sevens (H/L/S):Invalid entry. Please try again using H/L/S! before entering anything then the method is recalled again and all works fine form there except for my next issue) 2: the entry that is gotten from the scanner never passes any of my if statements even though it should.

my code:

private static char getHighLow(Scanner inScanner) {
    System.out.print("High, low or sevens (H/L/S):");
    String entered = inScanner.nextLine();
    System.out.print(entered);
    if(entered.equals("H") || entered.equals("h")){
        return 'h';
    }
    else if (entered.equals("L") || entered.equals("l")){
        return 'l';
    }
    else if(entered.equals("S") || entered.equals("s")){
        return 's';
    }

        char result = 0;
        while(result != 'l' || result != 'h' || result != 's'){
        System.out.println("Invalid entry. Please try again using H/L/S!");
        result=getHighLow(inScanner);
    }
        return result;
}

Answer 1

Instead of using while(), you can use ‘else’ like this-

private static char getHighLow(Scanner inScanner) {
    System.out.print("High, low or sevens (H/L/S):");
    String entered = inScanner.nextLine();
    System.out.print(entered);
    if(entered.equals("H") || entered.equals("h")){
        return 'h';
    }
    else if (entered.equals("L") || entered.equals("l")){
        return 'l';
    }
    else if(entered.equals("S") || entered.equals("s")){
        return 's';
    }
    else {
        System.out.println("Invalid entry. Please try again using H/L/S!");
        return getHighLow(inScanner);
    }   
}