Noob Help

[rapture]

ok, I'm taking my first Java class and in my first week. I've searched but this is different from .Net so much that I have a headache just getting eclipse set up and how to navigate the environment.

That said, I have a program that would take me 5 minutes to do in Visual Studio that I can't figure out in Java.

Here is the code

public static void main(String[] args) {
		
		String inputNumber;
		String number1;
		String number2;
		String number3;
		String number4;
		String number5;
		
		inputNumber = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter a five digit number ");				
		
		
		number1 = inputNumber.substring(0,1);
		
		number2 = inputNumber.substring(1,1);
		
		number3 = inputNumber.substring(2,1);
		
		number4 = inputNumber.substring(3,1);
		
		number5 = inputNumber.substring(4,1);
		
				
		
		
		JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, number1 + "     " + number2 + "     "+ number3 + "     " + number4 + "     "+ number5);
		
		
		
		System.exit(0);

	}

what I'm supposed to do is accept input of 5 numbers and then display them separated by five spaces. So if entered 05852 it would then display 0 5 8 5 2

I'm getting
"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -1
at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)
at practiceArithmeticOperators.PracticeArithmeticOperators.main(PracticeArithmeticOperators.java:29)"

[rapture]

comeon - someone give me a hint here

[VernonDozier]

The second parameter is the ending index of the substring (exclusive), not the number of characters in the substring.

If you want single character substrings, you can do this:

number1 = inputNumber.substring(0,1);		
		number2 = inputNumber.substring(1,2);		
		number3 = inputNumber.substring(2,3);		
		number4 = inputNumber.substring(3,4);		
		number5 = inputNumber.substring(4);

The number of characters in the substring is the end index minus the start index.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#substring(int,%20int)

The below is from the Java documentation (link above). See red below.

substring

public String substring(int beginIndex,
int endIndex)

Returns a new string that is a substring of this string. The substring begins at the specified beginIndex and extends to the character at index endIndex - 1. Thus the length of the substring is endIndex-beginIndex.

Examples:

"hamburger".substring(4, 8) returns "urge"
"smiles".substring(1, 5) returns "mile"

Parameters:
beginIndex - the beginning index, inclusive.
endIndex - the ending index, exclusive.
Returns:
the specified substring.
Throws:
IndexOutOfBoundsException - if the beginIndex is negative, or endIndex is larger than the length of this String object, or beginIndex is larger than endIndex.

[rapture]

Well thanks,

I knew it was going to be super simple and was overlooking it - I had read that page and totally passed over what I needed there.

(*must stop making assumptions about code when brain is infected with Microsoft patterns . . .)

You wouldn't happen to have an antivirus for that would you?

In VB.Net if I had development and wantd lop it would be substring(5,3) for where to start and how many. I didn't register the difference.

Thanks again for the help . . .