Java Converting English to Opish

Question

Please could someone help me to solve a small issue. I was given an assignment to convert an english word into opish. Opish is a language that adds the characters "op" after every consonant and if necessary before the next vowel. My code works for most words, however, if two consonants are next to each other, it fails. As example the word chat should be chopatop, but the code returns cophopatop as it is not checking to see if the next character is a vowel. Here is the code:

public class Translate {

/**
 * Is char a vowel?
 */
public static boolean isConsonant(char c) { 

    boolean consonant;
    if (c == 'a' ||  c == 'e' || c == 'i' || 
    c == 'o' || c == 'u' || c == 'A' ||  c == 'E' || c == 'I' || 
    c == 'O' || c == 'U'){
        consonant = false; System.out.println("No");}
    else{
        consonant = true;  System.out.println("Yes");}

    return consonant; }

/**
 * Is char a vowel?
 */
public static boolean isVowel(char c) {
    boolean vowel;
    if (c == 'a' ||  c == 'e' || c == 'i' || 
    c == 'o' || c == 'u' || c == 'A' ||  c == 'E' || c == 'I' || 
    c == 'O' || c == 'U'){
        vowel = true; }
    else{
        vowel = false; }
    return vowel; }

/**
 * converts given word to Pig Latin
 */
public static String toPigLatin(String word) {   
    int i; 
    boolean c;
    for (i = 0; i<word.length(); i++){
        c = isConsonant(word.charAt(i));

        if (c == false){
            String d = word.substring(i,word.length());
            System.out.println(d);
            String a = word.substring(0,i);
            System.out.println(a);
            return (d + a + "ay");
        }

    }

    return word; 
}

/**
 * converts given word to Opish
 */
public static String toOpish(String word) { 
    int i; 
    boolean c;
    boolean v;
    for (i = 0; i<word.length(); i++){
        c = isConsonant(word.charAt(i));
        v = isVowel(word.charAt(i));

        if (c == true)  {
            String front = word.substring(0,i+1);
            String back = word.substring(i+1,word.length());
            word =  front + "op" + back ;
            i=i+3;
            System.out.println("word " + word);
        }


         }
    return word;}
} // end class

Write unit tests. Start with simple cases and expand your requirement set. If a test fails, debug it. — nhaarman, Feb 16 '15 at 22:11
See http://stackoverflow.com/a/19161184/1980909 for a cleaner isVowel. Also, no need to copy it all for isConsonant, as isConsonant == !isVowel. — Adrian Leonhard, Feb 16 '15 at 22:15
As you state yourself, you're not checking if the next letter is a vowel... — Adrian Leonhard, Feb 16 '15 at 22:20

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '15 at 22:20

You're right, you're not checking if the next character is a vowel. You check the current letter and do nothing with it:

v = isVowel(word.charAt(i));

Instead, try something like this:

//We don't want out of bounds issues
if(i<word.length()){
    v = isVowel(word.charAt(i+1));
} else {
    v = true; //Pretend last character is vowel to force the end 'op'
}

if (c == true && v == true)  {
    String front = word.substring(0,i+1);
    String back = word.substring(i+1,word.length());
    word =  front + "op" + back ;
    i=i+3;
    System.out.println("word " + word);
}

Thank you for the clear response! Thats exactly the answer I needed. — Volt, Feb 18 '15 at 17:15

Java Converting English to Opish

1 Answers1