Question

So this is a portion of my code. If i entered ” 1111 ” for the preTranslation String, it should print out true but it prints out false. I’m guessing that .equal() cannot compare the two values but I don’t know another way. Any help?

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import java.util.Arrays;

public class test3
{
    public static void main ( String [] args )
    {

    String s1 = "Morse";

    // Decide whether Morse code or English
    String decide = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter 'English' for Morse to English code translation and 'Morse' for English to Morse code translation. Pay attention to Caps.");

    // Enter String & decide whether to convert to Morse or English
    String preTranslation = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter the words you wish to translate.");

    if ( decide.equals( s1 ))
        toMorse( preTranslation );

    else
        toEnglish( preTranslation );
    }

// Translate to Morse
public static void toMorse( String preTrans )
{
    // Initialize english letters
    char[] english = new char[3];


    // Initialize english numbers
    english[0] = 1;
    english[1] = 2;
    english[2] = 3;

    // Initialize morse characters
    String[] morse = {".","-", ".-"};

    // Replace spaces with |
    String phraseWithDelimiter = preTrans.replace( " ", "|");

    String[] translation = new String[phraseWithDelimiter.length()];
    System.out.println( phraseWithDelimiter.substring(0, 1).equals( english[0] )); // Should print out to be true
    }
}

Answer 1

You are comparing a String object with a character (a char) so equals will always return false. If you want to get a single character from a string, use charAt method instead of substring.