Help with PigLatin Program (new to java)

[schrum312005]

Hey guys,

I'm a college student in my first programming class and I'm having trouble with an assignment. The requirements to the assignment can be found here: http://cs.millersville.edu/~zoppetti/161/Lab8.html

Anyways, I'm using scanner to scan a string and tokenize it into words. However, I need the user's input to be returned without any spaces. Then I need to convert the into piglatin. I appreciate any advice anyone can give me.

Here's my code:

import java.util.Scanner;
 
public class PigLatin {
 
public static void main(String[] args) {
printIntro();
 
 
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.print("Please enter an English phrase or sentence ending with a period:");
String sentence = input.nextLine();
System.out.println("\"" +sentence+ "\"" + " ");
Scanner word = new Scanner(sentence);
System.out.println(" " + "in" + " " + "Pig" + " " + "Latin" + " "+ "is ");
System.out.print("\"");
 
while (word.hasNext()) {
String pigLatin = word.next();
System.out.print(convertPigLatinWord(pigLatin));
}
 
 
 
 
}
 
public static void printIntro() {
System.out.println("\t****"+ "Welcome to Program Translate to Pig Latin!" + "****");
System.out.println("\t***"+ "This Program will translate an English Sentence" + "***");
System.out.println("\t\t**" + "into Pig Latin." + "**");
System.out.println();
 
}
 
public static String convertPigLatinWord(String englishWord) {
int length = englishWord.length();
 
if (englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '.'
|| englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '!'
|| englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '?') {
 
char ch = englishWord.charAt(0);
String rest = englishWord.substring(1, length - 1);
return (rest + "-" + ch + "ay" + englishWord.charAt(length - 1) + "\""+" ");
 
} else if ((englishWord.charAt(0) == 't' || englishWord.charAt(0) == 'T')
&& englishWord.charAt(1) == 'h') {
return (convertTh(englishWord)+" ");
 
} else if (isVowel(englishWord.charAt(0))) {
return (englishWord + "-way"+" ");
 
} else {
char ch = englishWord.charAt(0);
String rest = englishWord.substring(1);
return (rest + "-" + ch + "ay"+" ");
 
}
 
}
 
public static String convertTh(String tWord) {
String th = tWord.substring(0,2);
String rest = tWord.substring(2);
return (rest + "-" + th+ "ay");
 
}
 
public static String convertPigLatinPhrase(String englishPhrase){
 
Scanner word= new Scanner(englishPhrase);
String nextWord = word.next();
int space=nextWord.indexOf(" ");
String nospace= nextWord.substring(space+1,englishPhrase.length()) ;
 
return(nospace+" ");
 
 
}
 
 
 
public static boolean isVowel(char c) {
if (c == 'a' || c == 'A') {
return (true);
 
} else if (c == 'e' || c == 'E') {
return (true);
 
} else if (c == 'i' || c == 'I') {
return (true);
} else if (c == 'o' || c == 'O') {
return (true);
 
} else if (c == 'u' || c == 'U') {
return (true);
 
} else {
return (false);
 
}
 
}
 
}

[JosAH]

I'm sorry I don't understand your question; neither do I understand why you're doing this:

System.out.println(" " + "in" + " " + "Pig" + " " + "Latin" + " "+ "is ");
 

while you could've simply done this:

System.out.println(" in Pig Latin is ");
 

The Scanner.next() method reads a Strings without spaces in it but that is all
I can sensibly say now.

kind regards,

Jos

[schrum312005]

I need to break the user input into words, by using scanner. I need to make it so that if the user input multiple spaces, such as, " There was a black cat." will be returned as "There was a black cat." I need to return the inputted sentence to pig Latin using the convertPigLatinPhrase method. I'm really stumped on how to fix my program; I've been playing around with it for several hours the last few days and can't figure it out.

I really appreciate the help, and remember I'm a newbie to java so I apologize for this.

Thanks, I hope you guys can help.

[JosAH]

I need to break the user input into words, by using scanner. I need to make it so that if the user input multiple spaces, such as, " There was a black cat." will be returned as "There was a black cat." I need to return the inputted sentence to pig Latin using the convertPigLatinPhrase method. I'm really stumped on how to fix my program; I've been playing around with it for several hours the last few days and can't figure it out.

I really appreciate the help, and remember I'm a newbie to java so I apologize for this.

Thanks, I hope you guys can help.

If you want to replace multiple adjacent spaces to a single space use the
String.replaceAll() method like this:

String s= "There      was     a  black           cat";
s=s.replaceAll(" +", " ");
 

This method uses regular expressions; the first argument reads: one or more spaces
and the second argument simply is a single space.

kind regards,

Jos

ps. can you briefly describe the rules for the pig Latin transformation?

[schrum312005]

The replace all method works fine for replacing the space between words such as: "there was a cat" becomes "there was a cat." However, this method fails when there is a space at the beginning of the sentence. If the user inputted something like " there was a cat." The output would then be " there was a cat." which is fine except for the space at the beginning. How would I get rid of this?

The rules for converting to Pig Latin are as follows.

1. Generally, convert a word by removing the first letter. Append to the end of the word a hyphen, followed by the first letter that was removed, followed by "ay". For example, "robot" becomes "obot-ray" and "hello" becomes "ello-hay".
2. If the word begins with a vowel, simply append a hyphen followed by "way". For example, "example" becomes "example-way" and "all" becomes "all-way".
3. If the word begins with "th", move the "th" to the end, not just the first letter ("t"), and append "ay". For example, "there" becomes "ere-thay".

I'm trying to clean up my main method, but i'm stuck on how to do so. When I attempt to move my while loop from main into convertPigLatinPhrase, I can't get the method to return when the return statement is in the while loop. Is this possible or how would I set up my method (convertPigLatinPhrase) so that it would break the user's sentence into strings with only one space between the words as well as no spaces in the beginning or end of the sentence.

I've tried to move some of my code from "main" into my convertPLPhrase method, and make a method call to convertPLPhrase in main passing in a the user sentence as a string, but I got an error message. I'm assuming that's the way it's supposed to be done. I've spent a lot of time on this program, which I first thought was simple has now turned into a nightmare. Hopefully I can get it cleaned up by Wednesday.

Thanks again. Here's the updated code as well.

import java.util.Scanner;
 
public class Pig {
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        printIntro();
 
        Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.print("Please enter an English phrase or sentence ending with a period:");
        String sentence = input.nextLine();
        sentence=sentence.replaceAll(" +", " ");
        System.out.println("\"" + sentence + "\"" + " ");
        Scanner word = new Scanner(sentence);
        System.out.println("  " + "in" + " " + "Pig" + " " + "Latin" + " "+ "is ");
        System.out.print("\"");
 
        while (word.hasNext()) {
            String pigLatin = word.next();
            System.out.print(convertPigLatinPhrase(pigLatin));
        }
 
    }
 
    public static void printIntro() {
        System.out.println("\t****"+ "Welcome to Program Translate to Pig Latin!" + "****");
        System.out.println("\t***"+ "This Program will translate an English Sentence" + "***");
        System.out.println("\t\t**" + "into Pig Latin." + "**");
        System.out.println();
 
    }
 
    public static String convertPigLatinWord(String englishWord) {
        int length = englishWord.length();
 
        if (englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '.'
                || englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '!'
                || englishWord.charAt(length - 1) == '?') {
 
            char ch = englishWord.charAt(0);
            String rest = englishWord.substring(1, length - 1);
            return (rest + "-" + ch + "ay" + englishWord.charAt(length - 1) + "\"");
 
        } else if ((englishWord.charAt(0) == 't' || englishWord.charAt(0) == 'T')
                && englishWord.charAt(1) == 'h') {
            return (convertTh(englishWord));
 
        } else if (isVowel(englishWord.charAt(0))) {
            return (englishWord + "-way");
 
        } else {
            char ch = englishWord.charAt(0);
            String rest = englishWord.substring(1);
            return (rest + "-" + ch + "ay");
 
        }
 
    }
 
    public static String convertTh(String tWord) {
        char t = tWord.charAt(0);
        char h = tWord.charAt(1);
        String rest = tWord.substring(2);
        return (rest + "-" + t + h + "ay");
 
    }
 
    public static String convertPigLatinPhrase(String englishPhrase) {
        String word = convertPigLatinWord(englishPhrase);
        return (word + " ");
 
    }
 
    public static boolean isVowel(char c) {
        if (c == 'a' || c == 'A') {
            return (true);
 
        } else if (c == 'e' || c == 'E') {
            return (true);
 
        } else if (c == 'i' || c == 'I') {
            return (true);
        } else if (c == 'o' || c == 'O') {
            return (true);
 
        } else if (c == 'u' || c == 'U') {
            return (true);
 
        } else {
            return (false);
 
        }
 
    }
 
}

[JosAH]

You're complicating matters far too much; a Scanner.next() method returns a
String and it skips any leading space from its input; one problem solved. For
a start have a look at this:

private static String pigLatinify(String word) {
 
    return word;
}
 
public static void main(String args[]) {
 
        Scanner s= new Scanner(System.in);
 
        while (s.hasNext())
            System.out.println("'"+pigLatinify(s.next())+"'");
}
 

As you can see the 'pigLatinify()' method doesn't do anything yet but you can
exercise the main() method and see that just the words are returned without
any spaces. That simplifies the main() method quite a bit; another problem solved.

Now you can concentrate on the actual 'pigLatinification' of a single word. If you
read the API documentation of the String class you can find a handy method
that can be used for the vowel check:

boolean isVowel(char c) {
        returnn "aAeEiIoOuU".indexOf(c) >= 0;
}
 

The String.startsWith() method can check whether or not a String starts with 'th'
so we're basically done: if the above two tests fail we simply move the first
character to the new suffix: -<x>ay where <x> was the first character; your turn now.

kind regards,

Jos

[schrum312005]

okay, I have the main looking like this now:

public static void main(String[] args) {
        printIntro();
 
        Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.print("Please enter an English phrase or sentence ending with a period:");
 
 
        while (input.hasNext()){
 
            System.out.print(input.next()+" ");
 
        }
 
        System.out.println("  " + "in Pig Latin is ");
        System.out.print("\"");
    }
 

The problem is, nothing executes after the while loop. I get the user input formatted correctly, but I want to now convert that to PigLatin, but I can't because the while loop stops the program. How do I proceed from here?

[JosAH]

The problem is, nothing executes after the while loop. I get the user input formatted correctly, but I want to now convert that to PigLatin, but I can't because the while loop stops the program. How do I proceed from here?

All you do now is read every word, print it and forget all about it. You either
have to pigLatinify each word, store it and print them all afterwards; or you store
the original words, pigLatinify them all when the while loop has stopped and
print them. Have a look at the ArrayList<String> class.

kind regards,

Jos