Scrambling Words

[Shyam Prasad Murarka]

Dear Readers,
I picked up this project from the net. I finished it but I wanted to know whether there is a better way of doing it. A more efficient and professional way. I know my logic is bad but I want to improve. Please don't worry about the other classes. Here are the requirements:

Write a class Scrambler.java which is once again a subclass of FileTransfer. Define a constructor for the Scrambler class using the keyword super, and write an overriding definition for the newWord method that scrambles the words in each line of text. Just remember that your program needs to scramble only the interior characters of each word, leaving the first and last characters untouched, so you'll have to separate out the leading character and the final character of each word before you scramble the interior characters. Also note that words with less than four characters can't be scrambled. Make sure that punctuation marks stay in the same place when you scramble words. For example, a period at the end of a sentence should not be processed as the last character in the word that precedes it.
Notes on using the Java API: You should make extensive use of the Java class library to implement these classes. For example, the String class and the StringBuffer class have methods that will help you a lot. The java.util.Collections class, has a shuffle method that scrambles a List (for example, an ArrayList). Therefore, a way to implement the scrambling function would be:

Put the characters to be scrambled into an ArrayList (as Character objects).
Call Collections.shuffle()
read the characters out of the ArrayList

It would be better if it is copied and pasted into your own editors. Its about 60 lines. Please don't think that this is my homework because it is NOT. I just want to improve my logic and style of writing code. Here is my code:

public String newWord(String word)
{
String scrambledWord="";
int firstChar = 0;
int lastChar = word.length()-1;

for(int i=0;i<word.length();i++)
{
char tempChar = word.charAt(i);
if(!(isPunctuation(tempChar)))
{
firstChar = i;
break;
}//end of if
}//end of for loop

for(int i=word.length()-1;i>=0;i--)
{
char tempChar = word.charAt(i);
if(!(isPunctuation(tempChar)))
{
lastChar = i;
break;
}//end of if
}//end of for loop

/*
 * validWord is the word that is the result of 
 * removing punctuation marks from the beginning and ending 
 * of the original word
 */
String validWord = word.substring(firstChar, lastChar+1);

/*
* If validWord's length is less than or equals to three thenthere is no sense in scrambling it.
*/
if(validWord.length() > 3)
{
ArrayList letters = new ArrayList();
/* Creating a list of letters that needs to be scrambled
 * But the first and last letter is excluded from scrambling
*/
for(int i=1;i<validWord.length()-1;i++)
letters.add(validWord.charAt(i));
Collections.shuffle(letters);
/*
 * When re-arranging the word after scrambling 
 * the first letters that were excluded from scrambling is first added
 * then the scrambled letters are added and then 
 * the last letters are added that were excluded from scrambling
 */
scrambledWord = word.substring(0, firstChar+1);
for(int i=0;i<letters.size();i++)
scrambledWord += String.valueOf(letters.get(i)); 
scrambledWord += word.substring(lastChar);
return scrambledWord;
}//end of if
return word;
}//end of method newWord()
 
public boolean isPunctuation(char letter)
{
int type = Character.getType(letter);
if(type==Character.START_PUNCTUATION || type==Character.END_PUNCTUATION || type==Character.CONNECTOR_PUNCTUATION || type==Character.OTHER_PUNCTUATION)
return true;
return false;
}//end of method isPunctuation()

[Henry Wong]

    scrambledWord = word.substring(0, firstChar+1);
    for(int i=0;i<letters.size();i++)
        scrambledWord += String.valueOf(letters.get(i));
    scrambledWord += word.substring(lastChar);

This section of code creates a lot of intermediate String objects.

Anyway, the assignment did mention that you consider using the StringBuffer class. It may be better to use the StringBuffer / StringBuilder class to build the result before converting it to a string.

Henry

[K Riaz]

Originally posted by Shyam Murarka:
I picked up this project from the net.

I've written my own version, but before I paste the code, can you post the URL of the original website from where you got the question so I can read it in full, as it sounds like a disguised assignment.

Thanks.
[ May 08, 2005: Message edited by: Kashif Riaz ]

[Shyam Prasad Murarka]

Dear Kashif,
I picked up this project from RentACoder. I usually go there to see if I can get hold of easy work so that I can practice. And please don't post your full code, if possible, please tell me where I have gone wrong and how I should improve it.