java problem with for-loop

[NickB750]

I'm practicing for loops in eclipse and am encountering an issue with my code.

public class JavaPractice {
	// methods must be declared outside of the main method...
	// why would you declare a method in another method...?
		
	static String textSearch(String query, String text) {
		int hit = 0;
		
		for(int i = 0; i < text.length(); i++) {
			if(text.substring(i, i + query.length() ) == query) {
				hit += 1;
				return "";
			}
			System.out.println("# of '" + query + "' found: " + hit);
			
			
		}
		return "";
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		String story = "There was a man named Bob who"
				+ "was fascinated by his name - Bob. "
				+ "He said the name 'Bob' to himself"
				+ "many times a day to emphasize its"
				+ "generic qualities. ";
		
		System.out.println(textSearch("Bob", "Bob saw a Bob"));
		
		
	}
}

Apart from the console error below, indicating problems on lines 9 and 27 :

# of 'Bob' found: 0
# of 'Bob' found: 0
# of 'Bob' found: 0
# of 'Bob' found: 0
# of 'Bob' found: 0
# of 'Bob' found: 0
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 14
at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)
at JavaPractice.textSearch(JavaPractice.java:9)
at JavaPractice.main(JavaPractice.java:27)

I have no idea what the problem is. Any help would be appreciated!

[Junky]

Don't compare Strings with ==, use the equals method instead.

[NickB750]

Thank you. I fixed that and made some other changes as of the original code:

public class JavaPractice {
	
	static String textSearch(String query, String text) {
		int hit = 0;
		text = text + "!@#$%^&*()";
		// if i gets to the points where there is no more text,
		// the loop can't check if there's a query (there can't be
		// because would be no more text)
		for(int i = 0; i < text.length(); i++) {
			
			if(text.substring(text.length() - 9, text.length()).equals("!@#$%^&*()")) {
					break;
			} 
			else if(text.substring(i, i + query.length() ).equals(query)) {
				// if the counter reaches past text length minus query length
				
				if( ( text.substring(text.length() - query.length()) ).length() > ( query.length() ) ) {
					// set i to the length of the text to end the loop
					i = text.length();
				}
				hit += 1;
				System.out.println("# of '" + query + "' found: " + hit);
			}
				
		}
		return "";
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		String story = "There was a man named Bob who"
				+ " was fascinated by his name - Bob. "
				+ " He said the name 'Bob' to himself"
				+ " many times a day to emphasize its"
				+ " generic qualities. ";
		
		
		
		// miscellaneous code vvv
		System.out.println(story.length());
		
		// method call		  vvv
		System.out.println(textSearch("Bob", story));
		
		// method test		  vvv
		System.out.println("It works if this prints");
	}
	
	
}

I get the console error :

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 153
at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)
at JavaPractice.textSearch(JavaPractice.java:10)
at JavaPractice.main(JavaPractice.java:49)

which I am pretty sure means that, in the secondif-then statement, the iterator i can't be grabbed by text.substring() from the counter because at a certain point i, the number of characters in text will be exceeded; i cannot be grabbed because there is no value outside of the text String. I'll try to alter the text for this, but I could use some tips.

If I'm doing something totally wrong and don't know about it, please tell me! Thank you!

[Junky]

Lets say query = "abc" and text = "abcd".

Your loop continues while i < text.length (which is 4). When i = 3 (which is < 4) what value do you think i + query.length() will have? Will that value be a valid value to substring text?

[Sizzlewump]

What happens when you take line 19:

 i = text.length();

and put it at line 21? Try putting a couple of print statements in between the if statements to see if and when they execute. It seems that only one of your if statements is triggering for your current variable and story configuration.

[NickB750]

Okay, that makes sense. If I get this right, when i = 3, i + query.length will equal 3 + 3 (because "abc".length() is equal to 3), and so it is equal to 6, which is outside of the length of text.

I figured a way around this: which is by checking instead if(text.substring(i - query.length(), i).equals(query)) and starting the loop at i = query.length() so that the counter stays inside text.length() (and because anything .length() can't be less than zero). Here's the updated code:

public class JavaPractice {
     
    static String textSearch(String query, String text) {
        int hit = 0;
        text = text + "!@#$%^&*()";
        // if i gets to the points where there is no more text,
        // the loop can't check if there's a query (there can't be
        // because would be no more text)
        for(int i = query.length(); i < text.length(); i++) {
            if(query.length() > text.length()) {
            	System.out.println();
                    return "";
            } 
            else if(text.substring(i - query.length(), i).equals(query)) {
                hit += 1;
            }
            
        }
        System.out.println("# of '" + query + "' found: " + hit);
        return "";
    }
     
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String story = "There was a man named Bob who"
                + " was fascinated by his name - Bob. "
                + " He said the name 'Bob' to himself"
                + " many times a day to emphasize its"
                + " generic qualities. ";
         
        String puzzle = "111111111111111111111I111111111111111I111111111111111111I1111111111111111111111111I111111111111111111111111111111I1111111111111111111111111"; 
        
        // method call        vvv
        System.out.println(textSearch("Bob", story));
         
        System.out.println(textSearch("I", puzzle));
        
        // method test        vvv
        System.out.println("There is no error in the loop if this prints");
        
        System.out.println(textSearch("This is a pretty big string", "This"));
    }
     
     
}

and here is the result in the console :

# of 'Bob' found: 3

# of 'I' found: 5

There is no error in the loop if this prints
# of 'This is a pretty big string' found: 0


so no errors, and it works!

I had to get another conditional to check if query.length() was greater than text.length(), since a search wouldn't work with that.

Thank you so much for your help! Does this forum have a system where I can give you credit?