[aletty]

I could use a little help to find a random char in a string. I think I'm on the right track but as of now it's just printing the first char in the sentence... help is much appreciated.


public static char randomChar (String inputText)
{
char randomChar;
int randomInt;

randomInt = (int) Math.random() * inputText.length();
randomChar = inputText.charAt(randomInt);
return randomChar;

}

This post has been edited by aletty: 25 March 2010 - 06:30 PM

[erik.price]

When in doubt, add parentheses!

What you have currently casts the result of Math.random() to int. The problem is that this method returns a double >= 0 and < 1, so casting to an int will make it 0 every time. Multiplying by the String's length is irrelevant obviously, since 0 times anything is still 0.

Try this instead:

randomInt = (int) (Math.random() * inputText.length());

[aletty]

Thank you so much for your response. Can't believe it was that simple, heh

[pbl]

When needing int random number better to create a Random object and call it's getNextInt() method

Random ran = new Random();
int number = ran.nextInt(100); // number will be >= 0 and < 100