Comparing first letters in an arrayList no matter the case

Question

I have been working on a program that is going to read two letters that you input and then delete them based on their starting letter.

My current problem is trying to figure a way how to read the starting letter no matter whether you enter lowercase or uppercase.

My current code:

for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
        if (list.get(i).startsWith(first)) {
            start = i;
            break;
        }
    }
    for (int x = list.size() - 1; x > 0; x--) {
        if (list.get(x).startsWith(second)) {
            end = x;
            break;
        }
    }

ArrayList contains case sensitivity checks the whole word I need to only check the first letter and I can't find anything after looking for two days on something to help me.

If you convert a string to upper case then it's letters can be compared regardless of case: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#toUpperCase-- — markspace, Jan 26 '18 at 20:44
@markspace Are you saying that I need to make my first and second variables to uppercase — Rylan Howard, Jan 26 '18 at 20:45

Munesh · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-30T21:47:21.450

0

If you need to check for just first character of both strings, you can use charAt() as below else you need to convert both strings to either Upper or Lowercase

Character.toLowerCase(list.get(i).charAt(0)) == Character.toLowerCase(first.charAt(0))

or

If you need to check for more than one character use string method toLowerCase() as below

list.get(i).toLowerCase().startsWith(first.toLowerCase())

edited Jan 30 '18 at 21:47

answered Jan 26 '18 at 21:22

Munesh

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Comparing first letters in an arrayList no matter the case

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