Weird Behaviour of String

[diskhub]

Hi there,
I have a tricky qn.
I have a string declared like the following:

String a = "\010";

and if i do a toCharArray() i will get a char array of size 1 which is what i want.

however when i did a scanner like the following:

String input;
Scanner inputReader = new Scanner(System.in);
input = inputReader.nextLine();

and when i enter \010 into the scanner, even when i print input,
it gives me
\010

but when i do a toCharArray(), it ended up giving me 4 char; \ , 0, 1, 0

Why is this so? if i need to do a scanner, how can i make sure that when i do a toCharArray(), i will get a size 1 char array with \010 as the char element.

[JosAH]

Hi there,
I have a tricky qn.
I have a string declared like the following:

String a = "\010";

and if i do a toCharArray() i will get a char array of size 1 which is what i want.

however when i did a scanner like the following:

String input;
Scanner inputReader = new Scanner(System.in);
input = inputReader.nextLine();

and when i enter \010 into the scanner, even when i print input,
it gives me
\010

but when i do a toCharArray(), it ended up giving me 4 char; \ , 0, 1, 0

Why is this so? if i need to do a scanner, how can i make sure that when i do a toCharArray(), i will get a size 1 char array with \010 as the char element.

Well, you typed in those four characters: \, 0, 1 and 0 and that's what the Scanner gives you. The character with code 010 is 8 in decimal and that should be the 8th character so it should be Cntrl-H if I'm not mistaken. Your keyboard driver may interpret it a "erase last character".

kind regards,

Jos

[diskhub]

then how can i use scanner to put the 4 char \ , 0, 1, 0 into \010?

[JosAH]

then how can i use scanner to put the 4 char \ , 0, 1, 0 into \010?

AFAIK you can't; you have to parse and change the String yourself.

kind regards,

Jos

[diskhub]

what if i don't use scanner, can i use system.in.readline()?

I want the following behaviour:
String a = "\010";

[Norm]

The compiler is what is turning the String "\010" into a single character.
To get that single character by inputing a bunch of characters is going to require you to do what the compiler does: look for the escape char, look if the next is an octal number and do the conversion.
Perhaps there is a way to use the JavaCompiler class to do this for you.

[diskhub]

Thanks everyone for telling me it's impossible...
hence, forcing myself to rewrite it... luckily done it in 30 mins :D

Thanks to all expert