How to sort the words in my file alphabetically?

[abstract dragon]

static String readSortAlpha() {
        String data1 = null;

        String[] wordArr = null;
        int[] indicesArr = null;

        try {
             File myObj1 = new File("fox.txt_words.txt");
             Scanner myReader1 = new Scanner(myObj1);

            while (myReader1.hasNextLine()) {
                 data1 = myReader1.nextLine();
                 System.out.println(data1);

                for (int j = 0; j < data1.length(); j++) {

                }
             }
         } catch (IOException e) {
             System.out.println("An error occurred.");
             e.printStackTrace();
         }
         return data1;
    }

[boreal wren]

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[abstract dragon]

How to sort the words in my file alphabetically?

[abstract dragon]

Specifically, I struggling taking these words in the file, and placing them in an array

[mellow idol]

after you get your data you have to sort it. The document is telling you to use buble sort if you don't care about your grade or merge sort for full credit.

you can also do Collections.sort(dataList) but I don't think your teacher will like that

I see you are printing each line. Do you get any output in the console?

[abstract dragon]

I understand that. Every time I try to put the words in an array, I can only grab the first letter of*** the word

[abstract dragon]

Yes, the output is exactly how the words appear in the file

[mellow idol]

ok that means you are reading the file correctly and all that's left is to add it to an array
I would assume you are not limited to only primitive arrays?

[abstract dragon]

I believe I am

I’m not allowed to use .collections either

[mellow idol]

you have two arrays declared. Do you need the two or?

String[] wordArr and int[] indecesArr

[abstract dragon]

yes, that's apart of the approach

[mellow idol]

sorry I missed that. ok

[abstract dragon]

when I use the .charat() method, I only get the first letter of the words in the string and .split() only prints out the memory address

[mellow idol]

So first we need to initialize to arrays. We can't leave them equal as null.
Give it a big size like 100-1000 or more so we don't run into issues with size.

it would look something like
String[] wordArr = new String[100]
int[] indecesArr = new int[100]

the charAt() method returns only 1 letter cuz that's what char is and I guess the default is 0 which is the first letter.
with split() you should be getting an array of Strings.

so instead having data1 be just String. it should be an array as well. (String[] data1 = new String[2]) it's fine to hard code that value in but if the input file changes we may get unexpected behavior
For each line we split we should get two Strings. (except the first line) The word and the number.

Here is how they use it on geeksforgeeks

    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        String str
            = "GeeksforGeeks:A Computer Science Portal";
        String[] arrOfStr = str.split(":");
 
        for (String a : arrOfStr)
            System.out.println(a);
    }
}```

and the output

GeeksforGeeks
A Computer Science Portal```

so now all that's left is to insert that inside the correct arrays we had

to do that we need to keep an index value which helps us know till where we are in those arrays

so insert a int index = 0; above the while loop

[abstract dragon]

I’m following and testing it out while you type. So far, so good

[mellow idol]

so in the while loop we want to insert the values and increment the index

could you tell me what data[1] is returning in the console?

so just insert a print(sout) data[1] somewhere in the while loop

[abstract dragon]

i'm getting a null

I made changes: static String[]

And deleted data1 = myReader1.nextline()

They were causing errors

[mellow idol]

        //Remove this we will instantiate it inside the while loop
        //String data1 = null;

        String[] wordArr = new String[100];
        int[] indicesArr = new int[100];

        try {
             File myObj1 = new File("fox.txt_words.txt");
             Scanner myReader1 = new Scanner(myObj1);

            while (myReader1.hasNextLine()) {
                //We read the line. Then we split it on space
                 String[] data1 = new String[]
                  data1 = myReader1.nextLine().split(" ");
                 System.out.println(data1[1]);
             }
         } catch (IOException e) {
             System.out.println("An error occurred.");
             e.printStackTrace();
         }
         return data1;
    }```

it's causing errors cuz you weren't splitting it. So you are just returning 1 string not an array of strings.

And deleted data1 = myReader1.nextline()
you are getting null cuz you aren't reading the file anymore

just an fyi this problem will be solved without much effort using a map. I hate problems that limit the usage of certain things.

A problem we might run into now is that first line in the file which is just a number
so we have to check each String inside data1 if it is a number or not

that's the reason I'm asking you to tell me what data[1] prints

[abstract dragon]

we can use map

the error says to create a local variable

[mellow idol]

oh my bad. the hell am I doing

do ```
String[] data1 = new String[]
data1 = myReader1.nextLine().split(" ");

[abstract dragon]

Now, I have an error for the return value

[mellow idol]

just make the method return void for now and remove the return

we can always change it later

[abstract dragon]

sorry, to be bothering you. i'm just making corrections and still running into errors

[mellow idol]

print the 0th element

[abstract dragon]

progress

[mellow idol]

ok as expected that number there will make us check each time if we have a number or a string

[abstract dragon]

i assumed that

[mellow idol]

now we just loop through data1 and check if it's a number and assign it to the correct array

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1102891/how-to-check-if-a-string-is-numeric-in-java

here you can see a few ways to do that

[abstract dragon]

Thanks for the help. I’ll work on this tomorrow because I’m heading to work and won’t clock out until midnight

[boreal wren]

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[boreal wren]

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[abstract dragon]

@mellow idol are you on?

[opal drum]

Note that your instructions literally tell you to expect a number on the first line, and that number tells you how many words there are in the file

[mellow idol]

I read the whole thing a few times

dunno where my head was 💀

[abstract dragon]

I actually made some progress. I was able to separate the words from the indices, place them into their own arrays, and incorporate the Merge Sort. Now, when I pass in the array from separateWordsIndex() into my Merge Sort, I receive Null.

[opal drum]

Surely you understand that you can't have 1 indice and 9 words? This is not how to read the data

Also, you seemed to be returning only the words array, not the indices array, so I'm not sure what you were doing but that couldn't work

[abstract dragon]

I misspoke. I was able to print the words and the indices separate but was having trouble returning them

[opal drum]

But what are those indices you're speaking of? Can we see the file?

[abstract dragon]

The code is in here: message.txt

[opal drum]

... The data file

[abstract dragon]

It was a text that contained this.

I’m not able to get the exact file bc I’m not near my laptop but the most recent code and screenshot of the text file is already in this thread

[opal drum]

Oh, that was the actual file. I see. Then yeah, you need to get these data. But the first line is the number of words

And you're not keeping the words and the indices in sync in the two arrays when reading them

Which doesn't matter much since the array of indices doesn't exist outside of the method that reads it

[opal drum]

Ah sorry, I didn't see you mentioned you have trouble returning them.
Well, admittedly, it's difficult to adapt to.
You can't return more than one thing. A better approach would be to create the arrays before calling the method, pass them to the method precreated, and have the method fill them. However, that means that you need to know the array sizes before calling the method, so you need to read the first line before calling the method. So you need to open the file outside of the method, read the number of words so you know the arrays' size, then call the method with the arrays to fill and the Scanner already open on the file.

[boreal wren]

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[abstract dragon]

what do you mean by "read the number of words"?

[opal drum]

The first line, the 9 alone. That's the number of lines

[abstract dragon]

so basically use a .length method?

[opal drum]

.... No? That's a file you need to read. This file gives you a number. You can't use a .length thing in this circumstance

[abstract dragon]

wait, I know hasNextLine() and nextline() reads the words in the file but you said "number", I thought you meant the length of each line for some reason

[opal drum]

No, I meant the 9 at the start of the file