How to shuffle characters in a string without using Collections.shuffle(...)?
What an annoying problem. I finally ended up with this:
import java.util.Collections;
import com.google.common.primitives.Chars;
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;
String shuffle(String s) {
List<Character> chars = Chars.asList(s.toCharArray());
Collections.shuffle(chars);
return StringUtils.join(chars.stream().toArray());
}
Yes, two libraries :)
How about this:
public static String shuffle(String text) {
char[] characters = text.toCharArray();
for (int i = 0; i < characters.length; i++) {
int randomIndex = (int)(Math.random() * characters.length);
char temp = characters[i];
characters[i] = characters[randomIndex];
characters[randomIndex] = temp;
}
return new String(characters);
}
I dont know anything simpler. But you can use the Math.rand() functionality to generate a random number within the range of the character's length without replace and that would give you a shuffled output
public class Shuffle {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Shuffle s = new Shuffle();
s.shuffle("hello");
}
public void shuffle(String input){
List<Character> characters = new ArrayList<Character>();
for(char c:input.toCharArray()){
characters.add(c);
}
StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder(input.length());
while(characters.size()!=0){
int randPicker = (int)(Math.random()*characters.size());
output.append(characters.remove(randPicker));
}
System.out.println(output.toString());
}
}
/*
Sample outputs
hlleo
llheo
leohl
lleho
*/
Not great performance, but quite readable in my opinion:
public static String shuffleString(String string)
{
List<String> letters = Arrays.asList(string.split(""));
Collections.shuffle(letters);
String shuffled = "";
for (String letter : letters) {
shuffled += letter;
}
return shuffled;
}