Programming Exercise 2

This exercise will help you practice file and screen I/O, and some string manipulation in Java. Your program will start by reading in two file names from the screen. To do this, put out a prompt for each file name, as in:

  Enter first file name: testfile1.dat
  Enter second file name: testfile2.dat

The actual file names entered in the example above are testfile1.dat and testfile2.dat. Each of these files is a text file. Each line in such a file will contain a single word, with perhaps some whitespace before or after each word. (No line will be completely blank). For example, the contents of testfile1.dat might be:

  blah
    conservation
   madam

and the contents of testfile2.dat might be:

  blah
    conversation
  blah
  radar

What you need to do is identify the following cases, whenever it occurs:

CASE 1: Whenever a word in either file is a palindrome, identify the word, the file, and line number it came from.
CASE 2: Whenever a word in one file is identical to a word in the second file, identify both words, the files, and line numbers they came from.

Your program will write output to a text file called results.txt. Also, put all the CASE 1 examples together, then all the CASE 2 examples, then all the CASE 3 examples. So, your results.txt file for the above example files should be:

CASE 1:
  "madam" on line 3 in testfile 1 is a palindrome.
  "radar" on line 4 in testfile 2 is a palindrome.
CASE 2:
  "blah" on line 1 in testfile1 is identical to "blah" on line 1 in testfile2
  "blah" on line 1 in testfile1 is identical to "blah" on line 3 in testfile2

There is no code to download for this exercise. You are free to use code in the course notes in any which way you please. Note that you will need to remove whitespace in front of and after words, if present.

Submission:

As usual, you will need to follow submission instructions carefully. This time, the name of subdirectory for this exercise should be: your username followed by 2.
You may use additional files, but make sure the source is included in your jar file.
Submit a printout (hardcopy) of your code before the due date in my mailbox.
What did you do to ensure your program is working correctly? Include test cases and corresponding output in your hardcopy submission.
Your program should have a debug variable which can be set to true or false. If set to true it should print out (to the screen) debugging details (such as what line of what file it's currently reading, the details of a comparison etc). If set to false nothing should be printed to screen.
Hint: you will find several methods in the String class useful. For example, take a look at the description of the methods trim() and toCharArray(). Remember, to get a description of a particular library method/class, use the local documentation described on the homepage. Note that String is in the package java.lang. The String class is also described in the Nutshell book.