Trying to use a substring with a method as a parameter but keep getting an error

Question

I've been trying to return a line of code using a substring, but everytime I try to compile I get the error "cannot find symbol - method findFirstVowel()" It appears in the final line of code. Why does this not work? findFirstVowel should be returning an integer right? And this method doesn't require an input either - so the parameter should be (0, the value of findFirstVowel). Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks!

public class words
{
    private String w;

    /**
     * Default Constructor for objects of class words
     */
    public words()
    {
        // initialise instance variables
        w="";
    }

    /**
     * Assignment constructor
     */
    public words(String assignment)
    {
        w=assignment;
    }

    /**
     * Copy constructor
     */
    public words(words two)
    {
        w=two.w;
    }

    /**
     * Pre: 0<=i<length( )
     * returns true if the character at location i is a vowel (‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i', ‘o’, ‘u’ only), false if not
     */
    public boolean isVowel(int i)
    {
        char vowel = w.charAt(i);
        return vowel == 'a' || vowel == 'e' || vowel == 'i' || vowel == 'o' || vowel == 'u';
    }

    /**
     * determines whether the first vowel in the String is at location 0, 1, 2, or 3 (don’t worry about exceptions)
     */
    public int findFirstVowel()
    {
        if (isVowel(0))
            return 0;
        else if (isVowel(1))
            return 1;
        else if (isVowel(2))
            return 2;
        else if (isVowel(3))
            return 3;
        else
            return -1;
    }

    /**
     * returns the Pig-Latin version of the String
     */
    public String pigify()
    {
        return w.substring(w.findFirstVowel()) + w.substring(0,w.findFirstVowel()) + "ay";

    }

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 24 '18 at 22:24

findFirstVowel is not part of the class String, Its part of your class. so Don't call it on w that is an instance of the class String

here is the fixed code

public String pigify() {
    return w.substring(findFirstVowel()) + w.substring(0, findFirstVowel()) + "ay";
}

Trying to use a substring with a method as a parameter but keep getting an error

1 Answers1