Java Methods

A & AB
Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures
Maria Litvin Gary Litvin

"Chapter 10" Strings

Copyright 2006 by Maria Litvin, Gary Litvin, and Skylight Publishing. All rights reserved.

Objectives:
Learn about literal strings Learn about String constructors and
commonly used methods

Understand immutability of strings Learn to format numbers into strings and

extract numbers from strings

Learn several useful methods of the

Character class

Learn about the StringBuffer class

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The String class

An object of the String class represents a
string of characters.

The String class belongs to the java.lang

package, which is built into Java.

Like other classes, String has constructors

and methods.

Unlike other classes, String has two

operators, + and += (used for concatenation).

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Literal Strings
Literal strings are anonymous constant
objects of the String class that are defined as text in double quotes.

Literal strings dont have to be constructed:

they are just there.

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Literal Strings (contd)

can be assigned to String variables. can be passed to methods and constructors
as parameters.

have methods you can call:

String fileName = "fish.dat"; button = new JButton("Next slide"); if ("Start".equals(cmd)) ...

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Literal Strings (contd)

The string text may include escape
characters (described in Section 6.5). For example:

\\ stands for \ \n stands for the newline character String s1 = "Biology; String s2 = "C:\\jdk1.4\\docs"; String s3 = "Hello\n";

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Immutability
Once created, a string cannot be changed:
none of its methods changes the string.

Such objects are called immutable. Immutable objects are convenient because
several references can point to the same object safely: there is no danger of changing an object through one reference without the others being aware of the change.

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Immutability (contd)
Advantage: more efficient, no need to copy.
String s1 = "Sun"; String s2 = s1; String s1 = "Sun"; String s2 = new String(s1);

s1

s1

"Sun"

"Sun"
s2 OK s2

"Sun"

Less efficient: wastes memory

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Immutability (contd)
Disadvantage: less efficient you need to
create a new string and throw away the old one for every small change.
String s = "sun"; char ch = Character.toUpperCase(s.charAt (0)); s = ch + s.substring (1); s

"sun"
"Sun"
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Empty Strings
An empty string has no characters; its
length is 0.
String s1 = ""; String s2 = new String();

Empty strings

Not to be confused with an uninitialized

string:
private String errorMsg;
errorMsg is null

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Constructors
Strings no-args and copy constructors are
not used much.
String s1 = new String (); String s1 = "";

String s2 = new String (s1);

String s2 = s1;

Other constructors convert arrays into

strings (Chapter 12)

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Methods length, charAt

int length (); char charAt (k);

Returns the number of

characters in the string Returns the k-th char

Character positions in strings are numbered starting from 0 Returns:

Flower".length();
Wind".charAt (2);

6 n'
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Methods substring
String s2 = s.substring (i, k); returns the substring of chars in positions from i to k-1 strawberry i k

String s2 = s.substring (i); returns the substring from the i-th char to the end
strawberry".substring (2,5); "unhappy".substring (2); "emptiness".substring (9);

strawberry
i

Returns: "raw" "happy" "" (empty string)

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Methods Concatenation
String result = s1 + s2;
concatenates s1 and s2

String result = s1.concat (s2);

the same as s1 + s2

result += s3;
concatenates s3 to result

result += num;
converts num to String and concatenates it to result

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Methods Find (indexOf)

0 8 11 15

String date ="July 5, 2012 1:28:19 PM"; date.indexOf ('J'); date.indexOf ('2'); date.indexOf ("2012"); date.indexOf ('2', 9); Returns: 0 8 8 11 (starts searching at position 9) (not found)
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date.indexOf ("2020");
date.lastIndexOf ('2');

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Methods Comparisons
boolean b = s1.equals(s2); returns true if the string s1 is equal to s2 boolean b = s1.equalsIgnoreCase(s2); returns true if the string s1 matches s2, case-blind int diff = s1.compareTo(s2); returns the difference s1 - s2

int diff = s1.compareToIgnoreCase(s2); returns the difference s1 - s2, case-blind

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Methods Replacements
String s2 = s1.trim (); returns a new string formed from s1 by removing white space at both ends String s2 = s1.replace(oldCh, newCh); returns a new string formed from s1 by replacing all occurrences of oldCh with newCh String s2 = s1.toUpperCase(); String s2 = s1.toLowerCase(); returns a new string formed from s1 by converting its characters to upper (lower) case

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Replacements (contd)
Example: how to convert s1 to upper case
s1 = s1.toUpperCase();

A common bug:
s1.toUpperCase(); s1 remains unchanged

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Numbers to Strings
Three ways to convert a number into a
string:
1. String s = "" + num; 2. String s = Integer.toString (i); String s = Double.toString (d); 3. String s = String.valueOf (num);
Integer and Double are wrapper classes from java.lang that represent numbers as objects. They also provide useful static methods.

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Numbers to Strings (contd)

The DecimalFormat class can be used for
formatting numbers into strings.
import java.text.DecimalFormat; ... DecimalFormat money = new DecimalFormat("0.00"); ... double amt = 56.7381; ... String s = money.format (amt);

56.7381 "56.74"

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Numbers to Strings (contd)

Java 5.0 added printf and format methods:
int m = 5, d = 19, y = 2007; double amt = 123.5; System.out.printf ( "Date: %02d/%02d/%d Amount = %7.2f\n", m, d, y, amt); String s = String. format( "Date: %02d/%02d/%d Amount = %7.2f\n", m, d, y, amt);

Displays, sets s to:

"Date: 05/19/2007 Amount 123.50"
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Numbers from Strings

String s1 = "-123", s2 = "123.45"; int n = Integer.parseInt(s1); double x = Double.parseDouble(s2);

These methods throw a

NumberFormatException if s does not represent a valid number (integer, real number, respectively).

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Numbers from Strings (contd)

A safer way:
int n; do { try { n = Integer.parseInt(s); } catch (NumberFormatException ex) { System.out.println("Invalid input, reenter"); } } while (...);
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Character Methods
java.lang.Character is a wrapper class that
represents characters as objects.

Character has several useful static methods

that determine the type of a character (letter, digit, etc.).

Character also has methods that convert a

letter to the upper or lower case.

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Character Methods (contd)

if (Character.isDigit (ch)) ... .isLetter... .isLetterOrDigit...

.isUpperCase...
.isLowerCase... .isWhitespace...

Whitespace is space, tab, newline, etc.

return true if ch belongs to the corresponding category

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Character methods (contd)

char ch2 = Character.toUpperCase (ch1); .toLowerCase (ch1); if ch1 is a letter, returns its upper (lower) case; otherwise returns ch1 int d = Character.digit (ch, radix); returns the int value of the digit ch in the given int radix char ch = Character.forDigit (d, radix); returns a char that represents int d in a given int radix

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The StringBuffer Class

Represents a string of characters as a
mutable object

Constructors:
StringBuffer() // empty StringBuffer of the default capacity StringBuffer(n) // empty StringBuffer of a given capacity StringBuffer(str) // converts str into a StringBuffer

Adds setCharAt, insert, append, and delete

methods

The toString method converts this

StringBuffer into a String
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Review:
What makes the String class unusual? How can you include a double quote
character into a literal string?

Is "length".length() allowed syntax? If so,

what is the returned value?

Define immutable objects. Does immutability of Strings make Java more

efficient or less efficient?

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Review (contd):
How do you declare an empty string? Why are String constructors not used very
often?

If the value of String city is "Boston", what is

returned by city.charAt (2)? By city.substring(2, 4)?

How come String doesnt have a setCharAt

method?

Is s1 += s2 the same as s1 = s1 + s2 for

strings?
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Review (contd):
What do the indexOf methods do? Name a
few overloaded versions.

What is more efficient for strings: == and

other relational operators or equals and compareTo methods?

What does the trim method do? What does s.toUpperCase() do to s? What does the toString method return for a
String object?
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Review (contd):
Name a simple way to convert a number into
a string.

Which class has a method for converting a

String into an int?

Name a few Character methods that help

identify the category to which a given character belongs.

What is the difference between the String and

StringBuffer classes?
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