Problems with concatenation

Question

Hello. I'm creating a program to do synthetic division. However, I seem to be having problems in my output, as my concatenations aren't working as expected.
(I'm still at the rough stages of my program so rough codes will be all I'll be able to post)
My code:
public String divide(){
            String quotient = "";
            int dividendLength = dividend.length;
            int forMultiplication = dividend[dividendLength - 1];
            int exponent = dividendLength - 2;
            int forAddition = forMultiplication * divisor;
            quotient = forMultiplication + varUsed + "\\^" + exponent;
            exponent--;
            System.out.println("The quotient so far: " + quotient);
            System.out.println("forMultiplication: " + forMultiplication);
            System.out.println("varUsed: " + varUsed);
            System.out.println("caret: " + "\\^");
            System.out.println("exponent: " + exponent);
            int i = dividendLength - 2;
            while(i > 0){
                forMultiplication = dividend[i] + forAddition;
                forAddition = forMultiplication * divisor;
                quotient += " " + forMultiplication + varUsed + "\\^" + exponent;
                System.out.println("The quotient so far: " + quotient);
                i--;
                exponent--;
            return quotient;
        }Testing it on x^3 -12x^2 -32 / x -3, I get the following:
The quotient so far: 121\^2
forMultiplication: 1
varUsed: x
caret: \^
exponent: 1
The quotient so far: 121\^2 -9x\^1
The quotient so far: 121\^2 -9x\^1 -27x\^0My questions: How come I'm getting "21" in lieu of "x" in the first term of my output? Also, how do I print out a caret cleanly? When I try to compile with only a single backslash (id est, using the escape sequence "\^" instead of "\\^" as coded above), I get an error. Is there anything I'm missing here?
On the "21 instead of x issue": Does 21 bear any special meaning when it comes to characters/strings? Like maybe something special for regex or ascii? I'm suspecting that there is a mistake in my polynomial parsing, although I also did println's for them and they all turn out as expected.
Note: For this rough draft, I'm expecting the output: "1x^2 -9x^1 -27". The actual (and well-formatted, for which I am gunning for) answer is x^2 -9x -27 remainder 123.
Thanks in advance for any insight!

Answer 1

Hi paulcw. I don't know what you exactly mean by "don't quote caret". In any case, your post gave me the idea to the solution. I made the caret a character. (If that is what you mean well, the message did get through. Thanks. ^_^)
I also managed to solve the 21 issue!
See I changed the quotient assignment outside the while loop to,
quotient += forMultiplication + varUsed + '^' + exponent;And, I'd get
The quotient so far: 217
forMultiplication: 1
varUsed: x
caret: ^
exponent: 1"217" made me wonder for a while. Then it dawned on me: I am assigning an int, char, char, int to a String, initially "". Java is adding them, not concatenating. So, I changed my code to
quotient += "" + forMultiplication + varUsed + '^' + exponent;And got just what I expected.
Thanks a lot!