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Java

Posted by Chris Rubio
Chris Rubio
1,643 Points

why is craig using double quotes instead of single quotes when initializes hits and misses in his contructor ?

why is craig using double quotes instead of single quotes when initializes hits and misses in his contructor ? the guesses are in CHAR datatypes correct ?

2 Answers

Ben Reynolds
Ben Reynolds
35,170 Points

Yes, the code would still work if the individual guesses were stored as strings instead of chars. I think two likely reasons for using chars instead of strings for this lesson are probably these:

  1. To teach students about different data types, this is a convenient exercise to demonstrate how strings and chars can work together.
  2. Chars are a primitive type, while strings are classes. If you know in advance that a value will only be one character, it can be more efficient to use chars vs strings in terms of memory use. Depending on how complex your program is, those little performance tweaks can really add up.
Ben Reynolds
Ben Reynolds
35,170 Points
Ben Reynolds
Ben Reynolds
35,170 Points

A string is essentially just a collection of characters. So even though each individual guess will be one char, the lists of hits and misses will contain several characters appended throughout the course of the game which is why he initialized those containers as strings (double quotes) at the beginning.

Chris Rubio
Chris Rubio
1,643 Points

mmm not quite understanding this one .... so (if he wanted too ) could he declare STRING instead on CHAR on his contructor ? why would he or why wouldnt he ?