Anagram Program to Compare two Strings

Question

I am creating an anagram program which compares two strings and am unsure how to go about creating a boolean that returns true if a character appears in both words.

My code is as follows:

StringBuffer strbuff1 = new StringBuffer(""); 

private StringBuffer strbuff2 = new StringBuffer(""); 

public Anagram (String s1, String s2) {

    s1 = strbuff1.toString();
    s2 = strbuff2.toString();

     } 

public boolean contains(char chart1) {
        return true;        //what do I put here? 
    }

}

Possible duplicate of [In Java, how do I check if a string contains a substring (ignoring case)?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2275004/in-java-how-do-i-check-if-a-string-contains-a-substring-ignoring-case) — dguay, Nov 18 '15 at 19:23
Please don't use StringBuffer as it was replaced by StringBuilder more than ten years ago. — Peter Lawrey, Nov 22 '15 at 20:13

Kyle Gowen · Answer 1 · 2015-11-18T19:47:57.577

1

So you should be able to use the StringBuffer method indexOf. Please check out the api documentation here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/StringBuffer.html#indexOf(java.lang.String)

Something like:

public boolean contains(char chart1) {
    if(strbuff1.indexOf(chart1) >= 0 && strbuff2.indexOf(chart1) >= 0) {
       return true;  
    }
    return false;      
}

However, I also think that your constructor's variable assignments may be backwards.

You probably want strbuff1 = new StringBuffer(s1);

This will create a new StringBuffer with the contents of the given String object.

Good luck!

*Edited to include a check for both words.

edited Nov 18 '15 at 19:47

answered Nov 18 '15 at 19:30

Kyle Gowen

467
2
8

The method should return true only if the character is contained within both words – Brandon Laidig Nov 18 '15 at 19:35
Edited to include this scenario. My mistake for missing that requirement in the original posting. – Kyle Gowen Nov 18 '15 at 19:48
Thanks. Also, I went this route because StringBuffer doesn't have a contains() method. Which it appears the original poster is restricted by. – Kyle Gowen Nov 18 '15 at 19:50
Good point. I misread that portion of the code. Have an upvote! – Brandon Laidig Nov 18 '15 at 20:00

Brandon Laidig · Answer 2 · 2015-11-18T19:35:32.803

0

This should give you what you need

public boolean contains(char chart1) {
    return stringOne.contains(Character.toString(chart1)) &&
        stringTwo.contains(Character.toString(chart1));
}

This will return true if the provided character is contained within both strings, false otherwise

edited Nov 18 '15 at 19:35

answered Nov 18 '15 at 19:27

Brandon Laidig

430
2
14

Anagram Program to Compare two Strings

2 Answers2