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Java Java Objects Creating the MVP Scrabble Tiles

Venu Babu Kolasani
PLUS
Venu Babu Kolasani
Courses Plus Student 628 Points
Posted by Venu Babu Kolasani
Venu Babu Kolasani
Courses Plus Student 628 Points

Using indexOf(String) throwing an error

What is the error in the attached code?

I am returning the result of an expression, however I am getting the error message.

ScrabblePlayer.java 
public class ScrabblePlayer {
  // A String representing all of the tiles that this player has
  private String tiles;

  public ScrabblePlayer() {
    tiles = "";
  }

  public String getTiles() {
    return tiles;
  }

  public void addTile(char tile) {
    // TODO: Add the tile to tiles
    tiles+=tile;

  }

  public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
    // TODO: Determine if user has the tile passed in
   boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile)!=0;
    if(isTile){
      tiles+=tile;
    }
    return isTile;
  }

}

1 Answer

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

The hasTiles method is only meant to check if a tile is present, it should not add anything to the tiles string like you do in your code. Also if indexOf returns 0 then the value is present in tiles (at index 0), -1 is the value returned if the value is not present. So the 0 in your code should be changed to -1.

Like this:

public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
  // TODO: Determine if user has the tile passed in
  boolean isTile = tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;
  return isTile;
}

You can also just return the expression directly without assigning it to a variable first:

public boolean hasTile(char tile) {
  // TODO: Determine if user has the tile passed in
  return tiles.indexOf(tile) != -1;
}

Which is a bit more concise.