Question

I’m writing a simple algorithm which ahould write in the console everytime a certain condition is met. Here is my code:

public static void StringTest()
{
    string stringToUse = "Ala BalaB JiBBerish Ala Jibberish Ala BalaB";

    int strLength = stringToUse.Length;
    int i = 0;
    while(i < strLength-4)
    {
        if (stringToUse[i] == stringToUse[(i + 4)] && stringToUse[(i + 1)] == stringToUse[(i + 3)])
            System.Console.WriteLine(stringToUse[i] + stringToUse[(i + 1)] + stringToUse[(i + 2)] + stringToUse[(i + 3)] + stringToUse[(i + 4)]);

        i++;
    }
}

But instead a literal string the output is numbers 434 . How should I format the ouput to get the actual letters if maybe someone could expain me why I don’t get an error and those numbers instead?

Answer 1

You’re adding characters together – which will give you an integer value. It looks like you should probably just be using Substring:

Console.WriteLine(stringToUse.Substring(i, 5));

Alternatively you could format the characters:

Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}{2}{3}{4}",
                  stringToUse[i],
                  stringToUse[i + 1],
                  stringToUse[i + 2],
                  stringToUse[i + 3],
                  stringToUse[i + 4]);

(Note the removal of extraneous parentheses, by the way. Sometimes extra brackets are useful – here they’re just distracting.)