Chapter 4: Mathematical

Functions, Characters, and Strings

CS1: Java Programming

Colorado State University

Original slides by Daniel Liang

Modified slides by Chris Wilcox

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Character Data Type
Four hexadecimal digits.
char letter = 'A'; (ASCII)
char numChar = '4'; (ASCII)
char letter = '\u0041'; (Unicode)
char numChar = '\u0034'; (Unicode)

NOTE: The increment and decrement operators can also be used

on char variables to get the next or preceding Unicode character.
For example, the following statements display character b.
char ch = 'a';
System.out.println(++ch);
Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Unicode Format
Java characters use Unicode, a 16-bit encoding scheme
established by the Unicode Consortium to support the
interchange, processing, and display of written texts in the
world’s diverse languages. Unicode takes two bytes,
preceded by \u, expressed in four hexadecimal numbers
that run from '\u0000' to '\uFFFF'. So, Unicode can
represent 65535 + 1 characters.
Unicode \u03b1 \u03b2 \u03b3 for three Greek
letters

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 ASCII Code for Commonly Used
Characters
Characters Code Value in Decimal Unicode Value

'0' to '9' 48 to 57 \u0030 to \u0039

'A' to 'Z' 65 to 90 \u0041 to \u005A
'a' to 'z' 97 to 122 \u0061 to \u007A

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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Escape Sequences for Special Characters

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Appendix B: ASCII Character Set
ASCII Character Set is a subset of the Unicode from \u0000 to \u007f

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 ASCII Character Set, cont.
ASCII Character Set is a subset of the Unicode from \u0000 to \u007f

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Casting between char and
Numeric Types
int i = 'a'; // Same as int i = (int)'a';

char c = 97; // Same as char c = (char)97;

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Comparing and Testing
Characters
if (ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z')
System.out.println(ch + " is an uppercase letter");
else if (ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'z')
System.out.println(ch + " is a lowercase letter");
else if (ch >= '0' && ch <= '9')
System.out.println(ch + " is a numeric character");

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Methods in the Character Class
Method Description

isDigit(ch) Returns true if the specified character is a digit.

isLetter(ch) Returns true if the specified character is a letter.
isLetterOfDigit(ch) Returns true if the specified character is a letter or digit.
isLowerCase(ch) Returns true if the specified character is a lowercase letter.
isUpperCase(ch) Returns true if the specified character is an uppercase letter.
toLowerCase(ch) Returns the lowercase of the specified character.
toUpperCase(ch) Returns the uppercase of the specified character.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 The String Type
The char type only represents one character. To represent a string
of characters, use the data type called String. For example,
 
String message = "Welcome to Java";
 
String is actually a predefined class in the Java library just like the
System class and Scanner class. The String type is not a primitive
type. It is known as a reference type. Any Java class can be used as
a reference type for a variable. Reference data types will be
thoroughly discussed in Chapter 9, “Objects and Classes.” For the
time being, you just need to know how to declare a String variable,
how to assign a string to the variable, how to concatenate strings,
and to perform simple operations for strings.
Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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Simple Methods for String Objects
Method Description

length() Returns the number of characters in this string.

charAt(index) Returns the character at the specified index from this string.
concat(s1) Returns a new string that concatenates this string with string s1.
toUpperCase() Returns a new string with all letters in uppercase.
toLowerCase() Returns a new string with all letters in lowercase.
trim() Returns a new string with whitespace characters trimmed on both sides.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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Simple Methods for String Objects
Strings are objects in Java. The methods in the preceding
table can only be invoked from a specific string instance.
For this reason, these methods are called instance methods.
A non-instance method is called a static method. A static
method can be invoked without using an object. All the
methods defined in the Math class are static methods. They
are not tied to a specific object instance. The syntax to
invoke an instance method is

referenceVariable.methodName(arguments).

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Getting String Length
String message = "Welcome to Java";
System.out.println("The length of " + message + " is "
+ message.length());

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Getting Characters from a String

String message = "Welcome to Java";

System.out.println("The first character in message is "
+ message.charAt(0));

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Converting Strings
"Welcome".toLowerCase() returns a new string, welcome.
"Welcome".toUpperCase() returns a new string,
WELCOME.
" Welcome ".trim() returns a new string, Welcome.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 String Concatenation
String s3 = s1.concat(s2); or String s3 = s1 + s2;

// Three strings are concatenated

String message = "Welcome " + "to " + "Java";
 
// String Chapter is concatenated with number 2
String s = "Chapter" + 2; // s becomes Chapter2
 
// String Supplement is concatenated with character B
String s1 = "Supplement" + 'B'; // s1 becomes SupplementB

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Reading a String from the Console
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.print("Enter three words separated by spaces: ");
String s1 = input.next();
String s2 = input.next();
String s3 = input.next();
System.out.println("s1 is " + s1);
System.out.println("s2 is " + s2);
System.out.println("s3 is " + s3);

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Reading a Character from the
Console
Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.print("Enter a character: ");
String s = input.nextLine();
char ch = s.charAt(0);
System.out.println("The character entered is " + ch);

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Comparing Strings
Method Description

equals(s1) Returns true if this string is equal to string s1.

equalsIgnoreCase(s1) Returns true if this string is equal to string s1; it is case insensitive.
compareTo(s1) Returns an integer greater than 0, equal to 0, or less than 0 to indicate whether
this string is greater than, equal to, or less than s1.
compareToIgnoreCase(s1) Same as compareTo except that the comparison is case insensitive.
startsWith(prefix) Returns true if this string starts with the specified prefix.
endsWith(suffix) Returns true if this string ends with the specified suffix.

OrderTwoCities Run

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Obtaining Substrings
Method Description

substring(beginIndex) Returns this string’s substring that begins with the character at the specified
beginIndex and extends to the end of the string, as shown in Figure 4.2.

substring(beginIndex, Returns this string’s substring that begins at the specified beginIndex and
endIndex) extends to the character at index endIndex – 1, as shown in Figure 9.6.
Note that the character at endIndex is not part of the substring.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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Finding a Character or a Substring
in a String
Method Description

indexOf(ch) Returns the index of the first occurrence of ch in the string. Returns -1 if not
matched.
indexOf(ch, fromIndex) Returns the index of the first occurrence of ch after fromIndex in the string.
Returns -1 if not matched.
indexOf(s) Returns the index of the first occurrence of string s in this string. Returns -1 if
not matched.
indexOf(s, fromIndex) Returns the index of the first occurrence of string s in this string after
fromIndex. Returns -1 if not matched.
lastIndexOf(ch) Returns the index of the last occurrence of ch in the string. Returns -1 if not
matched.
lastIndexOf(ch, Returns the index of the last occurrence of ch before fromIndex in this
fromIndex) string. Returns -1 if not matched.
lastIndexOf(s) Returns the index of the last occurrence of string s. Returns -1 if not matched.
lastIndexOf(s, Returns the index of the last occurrence of string s before fromIndex.
fromIndex) Returns -1 if not matched.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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Finding a Character or a Substring
in a String
int k = s.indexOf(' ');
String firstName = s.substring(0, k);
String lastName = s.substring(k + 1);

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Mathematical Functions
Java provides many useful methods in the Math
class for performing common mathematical
functions.

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 The Math Class
 Class constants:
– PI
–E
 Class methods:
– Trigonometric Methods
– Exponent Methods
– Rounding Methods
– min, max, abs, and random Methods

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Trigonometric Methods
 sin(double a) Examples:

 cos(double a) Math.sin(0) returns 0.0

 tan(double a) Math.sin(Math.PI / 6)
returns 0.5
 acos(double a) Math.sin(Math.PI / 2)
returns 1.0
 asin(double a)
Math.cos(0) returns 1.0
 atan(double a) Math.cos(Math.PI / 6)
returns 0.866
Math.cos(Math.PI / 2)
Radians returns 0
toRadians(90)
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 Exponent Methods
 exp(double a) Examples:
Returns e raised to the power of a. Math.exp(1) returns 2.71
Math.log(2.71) returns 1.0
 log(double a) Math.pow(2, 3) returns 8.0
Returns the natural logarithm of a. Math.pow(3, 2) returns 9.0
Math.pow(3.5, 2.5) returns
 log10(double a) 22.91765
Returns the 10-based logarithm of a.
Math.sqrt(4) returns 2.0
 pow(double a, double Math.sqrt(10.5) returns 3.24
b)
Returns a raised to the power of b.

 sqrt(double a)
Returns the square root of a.

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 Rounding Methods
 double ceil(double x)
x rounded up to its nearest integer. This integer is returned as a
double value.
 double floor(double x)
x is rounded down to its nearest integer. This integer is returned as a
double value.
 int round(float x)
Return (int) Math.floor(x+0.5).
 long round(double x)
Return (long) Math.floor(x+0.5).

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 Rounding Methods Examples
Math.ceil(2.1) returns 3.0
Math.ceil(2.0) returns 2.0
Math.ceil(-2.0) returns –2.0
Math.ceil(-2.1) returns -2.0
Math.floor(2.1) returns 2.0
Math.floor(2.0) returns 2.0
Math.floor(-2.0) returns –2.0
Math.floor(-2.1) returns -3.0
Math.rint(2.1) returns 2.0
Math.rint(2.0) returns 2.0
Math.rint(-2.0) returns –2.0
Math.rint(-2.1) returns -2.0
Math.rint(2.5) returns 2.0
Math.rint(-2.5) returns -2.0
Math.round(2.6f) returns 3
Math.round(2.0) returns 2
Math.round(-2.0f) returns -2
Math.round(-2.6) returns -3
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 min, max, and abs
 max(a, b)and Examples:
min(a, b)
Returns the maximum or Math.max(2, 3) returns 3
minimum of two parameters. Math.max(2.5, 3) returns
3.0
 abs(a)
Math.min(2.5, 3.6)
Returns the absolute value of the
parameter. returns 2.5
Math.abs(-2) returns 2
 random() Math.abs(-2.1) returns
Returns a random double value 2.1
in the range [0.0, 1.0).

Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Tenth Edition, (c) 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All
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 The random Method
Generates a random double value greater than or equal to 0.0 and
less than 1.0 (0 <= Math.random() < 1.0).

Examples:

Returns a random integer

(int)(Math.random() * 10)
between 0 and 9.

50 + (int)(Math.random() * 50) Returns a random integer

between 50 and 99.

In general,

a + Math.random() * b Returns a random number between

a and a + b, excluding a + b.

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