Java: Creating New Strings During Runtime to Edit

Question

I'm creating a Mad Lib generator in Java. If you know what a Mad Lib is, this will be easier to understand. Also, I'm new to Java, so bear with me here. I want to make it so that each Mad Lib only asks for the number of adjectives, nouns, etc. that are in that specific one. For example, Mad Lib 1 may have 3 nouns, while Mad Lib 2 has 5 nouns. Is there a way to write a separate method to be run X times, creating X new strings (for the player to enter X nouns), and giving each string a different name? Just giving the strings names like nounA, nounB, nounC, or noun1, noun2, noun3 would be perfect. I need the final story to be able to differentiate between them. It will be really nice if each time I decide to add another Mad Lib to my program to just be able to loop an addNoun() method 8 times instead of writing

String nounA = scan.next();
System.out.print("\f");
String nounB = scan.next();
System.out.print("\f");

...and so on every time for each part of speech. I have not yet learned about arrays, and I think this may have a solution involving that. Like I said, I'm new to Java, so if you try to show me anything advanced, please explain it in a way that I can understand it or find a simpler way to do it.

In case you 'feel' that arrays might help here, why don't you look into that? Also check the Java Collections Framework: docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections — home
– home, Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 6:44
I looked into arrays a bit more right after posting this, which was probably not the order that I should have done that in. The answer I chose confirmed what I learned after searching, so thank you for that. — Radi0actvChickn
– Radi0actvChickn, Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 7:32

Ashwani · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-08 06:57:09Z

1

If I understand your problem correct then you need to use ArrayList and HashMap to achieve this:

First you can create ArrayList of String to store X nouns. An ex: of Arraylist is:

  List<String> nouns = new ArrayList<String>();
  nouns.add('nounA'); // add related noun
  //or
  String nounStr = 'new Noun'
  nouns.add(nounStr);

Then you can categorise particular nouns by HashMap

HashMap<String, List<String> > nounCategory = new HashMap<String, List<String> >();
nounCategory.put('madLib1', 'nouns'); // add all list with a unique key madLib1 ...

To learn more about using List and HashMap read reference List:here and HashMap:here

answered Sep 8, 2013 at 6:57

Ashwani

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Comments

Oleg Pyzhcov · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-08 07:07:17Z

0

If you have the count of nouns, say, in int nounCount, use arrays like this:

String[] nouns = new String[nounCount]; // Create an array
for (int i = 0; i < nouns.length; i++) {
    nouns[i] = scan.next(); // Set each item
}

Then you would be able to access different words as noun[0], noun[1], etc. You're likely to use loops and store index of selected noun somewhere though.

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