Replace String with "*"

[spatel14]

Say I have the word 'Mississippi'. The program I'm writing basically does asks the user for a number, and if that number is greater than 4, the given word (Mississippi) becomes masked with '*', so in this case, '***********'. But, if the user enters 3, then the given word is only masked up to every fourth letter, so for example, in this case, '***s***i***'. Now, how can I write code to mask in this way (only masking some of the text and not all)? I figured out how to mask them all for 4, that's pretty easy, but should I use a loop for 3? I'm not sure how to begin..

[StormyWaters]

I would suggest using a for loop to iterate through all the characters. The % operator would also help.

[Norm]

Yes, looks like a loop is needed.
Use a paper and pencil to work out the steps need to do the job, Look at how you did it and then design a program to do it.

[spatel14]

Yes, looks like a loop is needed.
Use a paper and pencil to work out the steps need to do the job, Look at how you did it and then design a program to do it.

Alright, I'm thinking that I can loop through and get every fourth character, so that way, I have all the characters that I need to print, but how can I replace the rest with '*'?

[Norm]

but how can I replace the rest with '*

Put the String into a StringBuffer or char[] so you can access and replace them using an index.