A problem.........

[Steve Jensen]

Folks, i've typed in another program from Ivor Horton's most excellent "Beginning Java 2", and have a query regarding it.
The program is about counting the number of whitespaces, vowels, and consonants in a string variable.
OK, no problem there.
The code is listed below.

public class StringCharacters
{
public static void main (String[] args)
{
// Text to be analysed
String text = "To be ot not to be, that is the question;"
+ "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer"
+" the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, "
+" or to take arms against a sea of troubles, "
+" and by opposing end them?";
int spaces = 0,
vowels = 0,
letters = 0;
// Analyse all the characters in the string
int textLength = text.length();
for (int i = 0; i < textLength; i++)
{
// check for vowels
char ch = Character.toLowerCase(text.charAt(i));
if (ch == 'a' || ch == 'e' || ch == 'i' || ch == 'o' || ch == 'u')
vowels ++;
// Check for letters
if (Character.isLetter(ch))
letters++;
// Check for spaces
if (Character.isWhitespace(ch))
spaces++;
}
System.out.println ("The text contained vowels: " + vowels + "\n" +
" consonants: " + (letters-vowels) + "\n"+
" spaces: " + spaces);
}
}

I sort of understand the code, apart form the line:-
char ch = Character.toLowerCase(text.charAt(i));

What's going on here?
So we've defined a variable ch, of type ch. But then what? I can't figure out what we're doing with it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

[Barry Gaunt]

Hi Steve,
It takes the i-th character of text, and converts it to lowercase. The text.charAt(i) is the i-th character of the String text.
toLowerCase() is a static method of the Character wrapper class.
He changes the character ch to lowercase so that 'A' and 'a' can be compared in one single expression: ch == 'a' rather than with ( ch == 'a' ) || ( ch == 'A' )
[ February 01, 2003: Message edited by: Barry Gaunt ]