Question

I have here two problems needed to be solved. First off: I have here my program, wherein I want that whatever the user inputs will be saved on a string, and to be placed in an array.

my codes:

String words;
    String replaced_words;

    Scanner s = new Scanner (System.in);

        System.out.println("Enter a line of words basing on an event, verse, place or a name of a person.");
        words = s.nextLine();
        System.out.println("Word accepted!");
        //using char array method
        char [] c = words.toCharArray();

Now, I used the replace method for the string such as this:

String replace = words.replace(' ', '-');

But the problem is, this occurs as an error. By replacing the ‘ ‘ character into words such as:

String replace = words.replace(words, '-')

although I want to limit the length of the hyphens depending on the numbers of characters on the words.

The output of this program should be the following:
· Create a copy of this string to an array where each letter is replaced with a hyphen (-) and each space is replaced with an underscore (_). Symbols and numbers will remain shown.

The problems I’m getting is that it doesn’t replace them with a hyphen and underscore. It just displays the inputted text I did just typed via scanner.

Answer 1

To achieve your goal you can use:

    String word = "AB CD EF";
    String replace = word.replace(' ' , '-').replaceAll("[^\\-]", "_");
    System.out.println(replace); // prints "__-__-__"

if you want spaces between the underscores (to distinguish them from each other) you can use

    for (int i = 0; i < replace.length(); i++) {
        System.out.print(replace.charAt(i) + " ");
    }
    // prints "_ _ - _ _ - _ _ "