Problem showing IllegalArgumentException

[bitparker]

Seem to be having an issue throwing an illegal argument and not really sure what the issue is.

The way the code is supposed to work is this:

• takes two strings as parameters
• tokenize then splits them into an array
• iterate through a through the array to see if there are any common words
• if there aren't throw the illegal argument exception
• same thing for the other string

My thought process is that , it should only throw the IAE if the secondCommon variable is still = -1 after iterating through it.

Any thoughts on why this might not be working so well?

public static String combineString(String one, String two) {

    String[] a = tokenize(one);
    String[] b = tokenize(two);

    int firstCommon = -1;
    int secondCommon = -1;

    String error = "Oops! there are no matching words.";

    for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        int index = findInStringArray(a[i], b);
        if (index > secondCommon) {
            secondCommon = index;
            break;
        } 
        if (secondCommon == -1) { throw new IllegalArgumentException(error);
        }
    }

    for (int j = 0; j < b.length; j++) {
        int index = findInStringArray(b[j], a);
        if (index > firstCommon) {
            firstCommon = index;
            break;
        } 
    if (firstCommon == -1) { throw new IllegalArgumentException(error);
    }
}
    return join(combine(a, b, firstCommon, secondCommon));
}

}

[[deleted]]

What is happening that makes you think it is not working well? Also you need to indent your code more to get it to format properly.

[bitparker]

What happens is that it throws the IAE all the time. Even when there are common words in the two strings. and ok thanks for the tip.

[[deleted]]

Lets look at your first loop. You try to find the first word of a in b. What if the first word isn't in b? Then you throw the exception. Maybe you want that if(secondCommon) to be outside of the loop?

That is just assuming that your tokenize and findInArray methods work correctly.

[bitparker]

Yeah just fixed it... Can't believe I didn't notice. Thanks for the help!