CSE 142: Computer Programming I, Spring 2010

Homework 7 (Personality Test) FAQ

Q: Where do I start?

A: Try to break the problem into pieces. First try to read a record (a name and 70 answers) from the file. Then try to count the As and Bs. Look at the diagram on the last page of the handout for inspiration. If you aren't very familiar with arrays, perhaps try looking at practice problems about them first until you feel comfortable.

Q: How do I examine the letters of the line to see whether they are A or B?

A: Look at section 4.4 in the text book and look over section 7 problems about text processing. The String class's charAt method is useful.

Q: How do I place the A or B into the right element of the array, when counting As and Bs?

A: There is a repeating pattern that starts over every 7 characters. Look at the lecture example on section attendance. It's okay to use if/else statements to express the mapping between the characters and the array indexes, as long as you avoid redundancy as much as possible.

Q: I have a lot of repetitive code. How do I make it less redundant?

A: You must work especially hard on this assignment to eliminate redundancy. Use techniques we've practiced in the past, such as factoring common code out of an if/else statement, or creating a helping method to hold common code.