Sorting strings based off of value of letters added together. (Java)

Question

This is my first post here so please bear with me. I'm self-teaching myself Java in attempts to prepare for a Computer Science course.I'm planning on taking next year and I was given a problem.

The problem tasks me to assign values to lower case letters with a = 1, b = 2... to z = 26. Then I will have write a method which given an array of strings String[] names will sort them in terms of which array has the biggest value of letters added together. For example, "ed" would have the value 9 because e is 5 and d is 4.

Another example, given annie, bonnie, liz the method will sort to bonnie, liz, annie.

I'm kind of confused with how to approach this in terms of code and am looking for some help. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can use a code something like this.

public class J2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        J2 j = new J2();

        String s[] = {"annie", "bonnie", "liz"};
        j.sortArray(s);

    }

    void sortArray(String[] arr2) {
        int ww[] = new int[arr2.length];

        //find the integer value total of words and put in to array
        for (int i = 0; i < arr2.length; i++) {
            String s = arr2[i];
            char[] c = s.toCharArray();
            int w = 0;
            for (int j = 0; j < s.length(); j++) {
                w += (int) c[j] - 96;
            }
            ww[i] = w;
        }

        // sort the array acordind to values
        for (int i = 0; i < arr2.length; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < arr2.length - 1; j++) {
                if (ww[j] < ww[j + 1]) {
                    int t = ww[j];
                    ww[j] = ww[j + 1];
                    ww[j + 1] = t;

                    String s = arr2[j];
                    arr2[j] = arr2[j + 1];
                    arr2[j + 1] = s;
                }
            }
        }

        //print the array 
        for (int i = 0; i < arr2.length; i++) {
            System.out.println(arr2[i]);
        }

    }

}

Answer 2

i am not going to solve the exact problem for you as you learn more by experimenting yourself... however you may take this inspiration

public class Sorting {
    public static Map<Character, Integer> characters = new HashMap<Character, Integer>();
    static{
        characters.put('a', 1);
        characters.put('b',2);
    }

    static class StringValue implements Comparable<StringValue> {
        private Integer value = 0;
        private String name = "";
        public StringValue(String name){
            this.name = name;
            for(char aChar : name.toCharArray()){
                value += Sorting.characters.get(aChar);
            }
        }
        public int compareTo(StringValue o) {
            return value.compareTo(o.value);
        }
        public String getName() {
            return name;
        }
        public Integer getValue() {
            return value;
        }
    }

    public static void main(String [] args){
        String [] values = {"bb", "a", "aa" , "abaa"};
        List<StringValue> stringVals = new ArrayList<StringValue>();
        for(String val : values){
            stringVals.add(new StringValue(val));
        }
        Collections.sort(stringVals);
        for(int i = 1; i <= stringVals.size(); i++){
            StringValue aVal = stringVals.get(i-1);
            System.out.println(aVal.getName() + " has value " + aVal.getValue() + " and rank " + i);
        }
    }
}

which outputs:

a has value 1 and rank 1
aa has value 2 and rank 2
bb has value 4 and rank 3
abaa has value 5 and rank 4