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05 Fundementals - String

This document discusses Java strings and their properties. It covers that strings are objects that contain characters and provide methods to manipulate character data. Some key string methods discussed are charAt, length, toUpperCase, substring, indexOf, lastIndexOf, equals, compareTo, startsWith, and endsWith. Strings are immutable, so methods like toUpperCase return a new string rather than modifying the original.

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28 views14 pages

05 Fundementals - String

This document discusses Java strings and their properties. It covers that strings are objects that contain characters and provide methods to manipulate character data. Some key string methods discussed are charAt, length, toUpperCase, substring, indexOf, lastIndexOf, equals, compareTo, startsWith, and endsWith. Strings are immutable, so methods like toUpperCase return a new string rather than modifying the original.

Uploaded by

flwahalm
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Fundamentals of Java

Programs
(Part 3-Reference datatype -Strings)
Reference
• Readings
• Chapter 14: Strings, Characters and Regular Expressions
Introduction to Object
• In Java and other object-oriented languages, an
object is a collection of data that provides a set of
methods. For example, Scanner, is an object that
provides methods for parsing input. System.out and
System.in are also objects.

• Strings are objects, too. They contain characters and


provide methods for manipulating character data.
Primitive vs Reference Data Type
• Java’s types are divided into primitive types and reference
types.
• Primitive types: boolean, byte, char, short, int, long,
float and double.
• All nonprimitive types are reference types.
• A primitive-type variable can hold exactly one value of its
declared type at a time.
• Programs use variables of reference types (normally called
references) to store the addresses of objects in the
computer’s memory.
• Such a variable is said to refer to an object in the
program.
Class String
• Class String is used to represent strings in Java.
 Create an empty string represented as "" and has a
length of 0.
• String s1 = new String();
 Constructor that takes a String object copies the
argument into the new String.
• String str = "Hello";
• String s = new String("Hello");
• String s2 = new String(s2);
Characters
• Strings provide a method named charAt, which extracts a character. It
returns a char, a primitive type that stores an individual character.
String fruit = "banana";
char letter = fruit.charAt(0);

• The argument 0 means that we want the letter at position 0. Like array
indexes, string indexes start at 0, so the character assigned to letter is b.
• String method length determines the number of characters in a string.
String fruit = "banana";
System.out.print(fruit.length()); //output 6
System.out.print( fruit.charAt(fruit.length())); //Error!
System.out.print( fruit.charAt(fruit.length()-1)); //Correct!
Strings are Immutable
• Strings provide methods, toUpperCase and toLowerCase,
that convert from uppercase to lowercase and back.
• These methods are often a source of confusion, because it
sounds like they modify strings. But neither these methods
nor any others can change a string, because strings are
immutable.
String name = “Hello Java";
String upperName = name.toUpperCase();
System.out.print(name +”\n”+ upperName);

Output:
Hello Java
HELLO JAVA
Substrings Method
• The substring method returns a new string that copies letters from an
existing string, starting at the given index.
• fruit.substring(0) returns "banana"
• fruit.substring(2) returns "nana"
• fruit.substring(6) returns "“

• There are other versions of substring that have different parameters. If


it’s invoked with two arguments, they are treated as a start and end index:
• fruit.substring(0, 3) returns "ban"
• fruit.substring(2, 5) returns "nan"
• fruit.substring(6, 6) returns ""
The indexOf Method
• The indexOf method searches for a character in a string and it returns the
index of the first appearance.
String fruit = "banana";
int index = fruit.indexOf('a’); //index=1

• To find subsequent appearances, you can use another version of indexOf,


which takes a second argument that indicates where in the string to start
looking.
int index = fruit.indexOf('a', 2); //index=3

• If the character does not appear in the string, indexOf returns -1. Since
indexes cannot be negative, this value indicates the character was not
found.
The indexOf Method
• You can also use indexOf to search for a substring, not just a single
character.
int index = fruit.indexOf(“nan”); //index=2

• Method lastIndexOf locates the last occurrence of a character in a


String. The method searches from the end of the String toward the
beginning. If it finds the character, it returns the character’s index in the
String—otherwise, it returns –1.
• A second version of lastIndexOf takes two integer arguments—the
integer representation of the character and the index from which to begin
searching backward.

String fruit = "banana";


int index = fruit.lastIndexOf('a’); //index=5
int index = fruit.lastIndexOf(‘a’,4); //index=3
String Comparison
• equals method used to compare strings.
• The equals method returns true if the strings contain the
same characters; otherwise it returns false.
• String method equalsIgnoreCase ignores whether the letters
in each String are uppercase or lowercase when performing
the comparison.
String name1 = “Java";
String name2 = “JAVA";

boolean answer= name1.equals(name2);


System.out.println(“Answer=“+answer); //output false

answer= name1.equalsIgnoreCase(name2);
System.out.println(“Answer=“+answer); //output true
String Comparison
• We can use compareTo to see which comes first in alphabetical
order. The return value from compareTo is the difference between
the first characters in the strings that differ.
• If the strings are equal, their difference is zero.
• If the first string (the one on which the method is invoked) comes first in
the alphabet, the difference is negative. Otherwise, the difference is
positive.

String name1 = "Alan Turing";


String name2 = "Ada Lovelace";
int answer= name1.compareTo(name2);
System.out.println(“Answer=“+answer); //output positive 8

• In the preceding code, compareTo returns positive 8, because the second


letter of "Ada" comes before the second letter of "Alan" by 8 letters.
• Both equals and compareTo are case-sensitive. The uppercase letters
come before the lowercase letters, so "Ada" comes before "ada".
String Checking
• String methods startsWith and endsWith
determine whether strings start with or end with a
particular set of characters.
String name1 = “started";
String name2 = “start";
String name4 = “end";

System.out.println(name1.startsWith(‘s’)); //output true


System.out.println(name1.startsWith(“st”)); //output true

System.out.println(name2.startsWith(‘s’)); //output true


System.out.println(name2.startsWith(“st”)); //output true

System.out.println(name1.endsWith(‘d’)); //output true


System.out.println(name1.endsWith(“ed”)); //output true

System.out.println(name2.endsWith(‘d’)); //output false


System.out.println(name3.endsWith(‘d’)); //output true

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