Question

I have a problem in which I have an array containing the letters in the alphabet. I was wondering what the best way to move the array elements a certain amount would be. For example, if the key is 2,

and

array = "A,B,C,D,E.."

how can I make is so that after the transformation,

array = "C,D,E,F,G..."

Would the simplest solution be an if statement?

Thanks

Answer 1

This should do it:

char[] input = ...
char[] result = new char[input.length];
int shift = 2;

for(int i = 0; i < input.length; i++)
{
    result[i] = input[(i + shift) % input.length];
}

As you can see, you need a for loop. An if won’t do it. It will shift all chars two to the left.

The result will be: ['C', 'D', ..., 'Z', 'A', 'B']

This method is called a circular shift.