[Brovahkiin501]

Hi everyone! I amy trying to write a program to identify whether a string that has been inputted by the user is a palindrome or not but my output is wrong /: Here is my code! If somebody could help me with what's wrong it would be much appreciated (:

import java.util.Scanner;
public class Palindrome {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
		System.out.print("Please enter a string: ");
		String s = input.next();
		char [] palindrome = s.toCharArray();
		
		if (isPalindrome(palindrome)) {
			System.out.println(s + " is a palindrome.");
		} else {
			System.out.println(s + " is not a palindrome. ");
		}
	}
	
	public static boolean isPalindrome(char[] palindrome) {
		char[] result = new char[palindrome.length];
		for (int i = 0, j = palindrome.length - 1; i < palindrome.length; i++, j--) {
			result[j] = palindrome[i];
		}
		if (palindrome == result) {
			return true;
		}
		return false;
	}

}

[pbl]

You can't compare arrays like that
if (palindrome == result) {

to test if a String is a plaindrome just compare if

digit[0] == digit[digit.length-1]
digit[1] == digit[digit.length-2]
digit[2] == digit[digit.length-3]
up to
digit[digit.length / 2]

[Kinaces]

The problem is you are not comparing the values of the two arrays. Let's take a look at an example.

char[] set1 = {'a', 'b', 'c'};
char[] set2 = {'a', 'b', 'c'};
		
System.out.println(set1 == set2); //prints false

When you compare one array to another using == it does not compare the values in the array.

EDIT: Darn you pbl you beat me to it.

This post has been edited by Kinaces: 29 October 2012 - 07:24 PM

[Brovahkiin501]

but pbl, how will that work? Because how will you account for the difference in the lengths of the strings the the user will enter?

[pbl]

That should do it

boolean isPalindrome(char[] digit) {
   int last = digit.length - 1;

   for(int i = 0; i < digit.length/2; ++i) {
       if(digit[i] != digit[last])
           return false;
       --last;
   }

   return true;
}

[farrell2k]

You're being way too complicated. If you just want to check only single words like mom, dad, pop, racecar, etc, you can just do:

public boolean isPalindrome(String s) {
        String input = s.toLowerCase();
        String reversed = new StringBuffer(input).reverse().toString();
    
        return input.equals(reversed);
}

If you want to check for phrases and sentences, it becomes a little bit more complicated, because you have to deal with spacing, but all you need to do is build a one string from input with no spaces (String.split()), then another with no spaces reversed, then check their equality.