Question

This is my first question on this site so i’ll try not to be a total noob..

I’m currently creating hangman game in java.
So my question to you is if we are given a word “ghost”
and ghost is replaced with “_ “,

hiddenWord = ghost.length();
for (i=0; i < ghost.lenth(); i ++)
System.out.print("_ ")

giving us an output of

“_ _ _ _ _ “

Lets say we guess the letter “O”
the letter “o” is guessed, how do i replace `

"_ _ _ _ _" with 
"_ _ o _ _ "

my current class file

public void pickWord()
    {
        String[] listOfWords;
        listOfWords = new String[10];
        listOfWords[0] = "shenanigans";
        listOfWords[1] = "conversely";
        listOfWords[2] = "octopus";
        listOfWords[3] = "dizzy";
        listOfWords[4] = "malicious";
        listOfWords[5] = "goosebumps";
        listOfWords[6] = "flying";
        listOfWords[7] = "staff";
        listOfWords[8] = "xylophone";
        listOfWords[9] = "zapping";
        Random generator = new Random();
        int lineNumber = generator.nextInt(9);
        disguisedWord = listOfWords[lineNumber];


    }   
    public void displayMark()
    {
        for( int i = 0; i < disguisedWord.length(); i ++)
            underscore = underscore + "_ ";
        System.out.println(underscore);

    }
    public void makeGuess() throws IOException
    {
        System.out.println("Your word is " + disguisedWord.length() + " letters long.");
        System.out.println("Feel free to guess a letter.");
        guess = (char)System.in.read();

Answer 1

String ghost = "ghost";
String input = "o";
for (int i = 0; i < ghost.length(); i++) {
    if (String.valueOf(ghost.charAt(i)).equalsIgnoreCase(input)) {
        System.out.print(input + " ");
    } else {
        System.out.print("_ ");
    }
}

You can simplify the if statement using the ternary operator:

System.out.print(String.valueOf(ghost.charAt(i)).equalsIgnoreCase(input) ? input + " " : "_ ");