Reputation: 12317

First letter of String to Char

What I have is a student with a name and firstletter

So I have a class student like:

private String name = "Unknown";

private char nameLetter = "u"; 

public void identify()
{
    System.out.println("Student first letter : " + nameLetter);
    System.out.println("Student name : " + name);

}

public void setName(String newName)
{
    name = newName;
    nameLetter = newName.substring(0);
}

But i get the error cant convert from string to char.

I know I could make a String nameLetter instead of char but I want to try it with char.

Upvotes: 1

Answers (6)

Bathsheba

Reputation: 234685

"u" is a string literal, 'u' a char.

Specifally, you need to replace nameLetter = newName.substring(0); with nameLetter = newName.charAt(0); as the former returns a string, the latter a char.

Upvotes: 4

Reimeus

Reputation: 159754

Enclose character primitives with ' instead of "

private char nameLetter = 'u';

Use charAt instead of substring for extracting characters from Strings

nameLetter = newName.charAt(0);

Read: Characters

Upvotes: 1

Sergey Kalinichenko

Reputation: 726539

You need this:

nameLetter = newName.charAt(0);

Of course you must check that newName's length is at least 1, otherwise there would be an exception:

public void setName(String newName) {
    name = newName;
    if (newName != null && newName.length() > 0) {
        nameLetter = newName.substring(0);
    } else {
        nameLetter = '-'; // Use some default.
    }
}

Upvotes: 7