Experimenting with looping through array

Question

I've got this piece of code to check if some input of monosyllabic or not. Hope I can explain my problem with it. What it now does, is keep track of every first and last position of a vowel in the input. For a word like "bed", it works fine. The first position of an 'e' is the same as the last one, so it says "input is monosyllabic. (I'm not writing the program for English, so for those of you wondering how to recognize the monosyllabicity of "race" for example, that's irrelevant). And of course I still need to account for words like "breed", with two consecutive vowels.
The thing is however, that the for loop keeps track of the first and last position of every vowel in the array. If a vowel from the array is not in the input, it prints "-1". Now what I want it to do, is keep track of the first and last position for 'a' vowel, and not for every vowel. So now for an input like "universe", the println(first/lastVowel) prints several lines. Being the first and last position of 'u', the first and last of 'i' and of 'e'. Because the first and last position of 'u' is equal, it also prints "input is monosyllabic".
How do I let the for loop only keep track of the first vowel and the last vowel it encounters, and not creating a specific integer value for each vowel defined in the array?
{code}char [] vowels = {'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'};
     for (char item : vowels){
          int firstVowel = input.indexOf(item);
          int lastVowel = input.lastIndexOf(item);
          System.out.println(firstVowel);
          System.out.println(lastVowel);
          if (!(firstVowel==-1) && !(lastVowel==-1) && firstVowel==lastVowel){
               System.out.println("input is monosyllabic");
     }{code}

Answer 1

Igor_Pavlove wrote:
I've got this piece of code to check if some input of monosyllabic or not. Hope I can explain my problem with it. What it now does, is keep track of every first and last position of a vowel in the input. For a word like "bed", it works fine. The first position of an 'e' is the same as the last one, so it says "input is monosyllabic. (I'm not writing the program for English, so for those of you wondering how to recognize the monosyllabicity of "race" for example, that's irrelevant). And of course I still need to account for words like "breed", with two consecutive vowels.
The thing is however, that the for loop keeps track of the first and last position of every vowel in the array. If a vowel from the array is not in the input, it prints "-1". Now what I want it to do, is keep track of the first and last position for 'a' vowel, and not for every vowel. So now for an input like "universe", the println(first/lastVowel) prints several lines. Being the first and last position of 'u', the first and last of 'i' and of 'e'. Because the first and last position of 'u' is equal, it also prints "input is monosyllabic".
How do I let the for loop only keep track of the first vowel and the last vowel it encounters, and not creating a specific integer value for each vowel defined in the array?
{code}char [] vowels = {'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'};
     for (char item : vowels){
          int firstVowel = input.indexOf(item);
          int lastVowel = input.lastIndexOf(item);
          System.out.println(firstVowel);
          System.out.println(lastVowel);
          if (!(firstVowel==-1) && !(lastVowel==-1) && firstVowel==lastVowel){
               System.out.println("input is monosyllabic");
     }{code}You have a couple of problems with this:
1 - notice that your firstVowel and lastVowel variables are defined within the scope of your for loop so they fresh and new for each iteration of the loop. So if you never get any result other than that of 'u'. (except for the print, but you don't have any results you can actually use)
2 - for firstVowel, you just need to check if your return from your (indexOf is less than firstVowel) and (firstVowel not equal to -1): for your lastVowel you do the same but check for greater than.
To accomplish this you have to take the definition of your firstVowel and lastVowel outside of your for loop, you'll also need to use a variable to catch your indexOf so you can do the comparison for firstVowel and lastVowel.