But for those who would rather not visit the site, please look at my code and tell me what I'm missing, because it really is driving me crazy.

Problem: Return true if the string "cat" and "dog" appear the same number of times in the given string.

My Code:

public boolean catDog(String str)
{

boolean result = false;
int cat = 0;
int dog = 0;
int len = str.length();

for(int i = 0; i <(len-2);i++)
{

 String sub = str.substring(i, i+3);
 if (sub.equals("cat")) cat ++;
 if (sub.equals("dog")) dog ++;

 if (cat != dog) result = false;
 else result =  true;
}
return result;

}

}

Any (useful) help is appreciated =)

Post edited at 12:38 pm on April 3, 2008 by xren

-------
N&R;D
you&me babe
October 10, 2004

for(int i= 0; i < (len-2); i++)
An i of 0 is not less than a length of (less than or equal to) 2 minus 2.

Result is initialized to false, and only modified within the loop.

Since the loop will never run for lengths less than or equal to 2, the result can only be false.


For a simple fix, consider..

If the purpose of the loop is to count how many times both "dog" and "cat" occur..

Is there any point to knowing if they've occured the same amount of times, or not, when you're not done counting?

• Declare String sub; before / outside of the loop.

  The optimizer should resolve this for you, but it still shouldn't be (re)declared every pass through the loop.

• Your two ifs should be an if/else if.

  If the string is "cat", it can't also be "dog".

• As above, determine if cat == dog after / outside of the loop.
  

Post edited at 4:18 pm on April 4, 2008 by Whuppee

-------
Unbelievably awesomesauce to the absurd degree that I wet myself.
Who else has created a LW/magnets
so explicit the mods deleted a screencap of it? =P

It makes a lot more sense, I just always miss the little details every now and then and then I go crazy.

I appreciate the help. It works btw.

-------
N&R;D
you&me babe
October 10, 2004

That's all a matter of taste though.