Interview Prep with Java: Tackling Consonants and Character Frequency Problems

?? Interview Challenge: Tackling String Manipulation ??

In my recent interview, I was presented with two interesting string-related questions that made me think! ??

Question 1: ?? Find the consonants in a given string. The challenge was to quickly identify and filter out only the consonants from the string, ignoring vowels, spaces, and special characters.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class ConsonantsFromWord {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
        
        // Get input word from user
        System.out.print("Enter a word: ");
        String word = scanner.nextLine();
        
        System.out.println("Consonants in the word are: ");
        printConsonants(word);
        
        scanner.close();
    }

    // Function to print consonants from a word
    public static void printConsonants(String word) {
        // Convert word to lowercase for easier comparison
        word = word.toLowerCase();
        
        for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
            char ch = word.charAt(i);
            
            // Check if the character is a consonant
            if (ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'z' && !isVowel(ch)) {
                System.out.print(ch + " ");
            }
        }
    }

    // Helper function to check if a character is a vowel
    public static boolean isVowel(char ch) {
        return (ch == 'a' || ch == 'e' || ch == 'i' || ch == 'o' || ch == 'u');
    }
}
        

Question 2:?? Find the frequency of each character in the string. Given the string "Tushar Kumar", I had to calculate the frequency of each character while ignoring spaces.

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class CharacterFrequency {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "Tushar Kumar";
        findCharFrequency(str);
    }

    public static void findCharFrequency(String str) {
        Map<Character, Integer> frequencyMap = new HashMap<>();

        for (char ch : str.replaceAll("\\s", "").toCharArray()) {
            frequencyMap.put(ch, frequencyMap.getOrDefault(ch, 0) + 1);
        }

        System.out.println("Character Frequency: " + frequencyMap);
    }
}        

These types of problems are always a great way to sharpen your logical thinking and coding skills. If anyone has a cool approach to solving these, I’d love to hear your thoughts! ??

#coding #interviewprep #problemSolving #stringManipulation #developerlife #techiebyprofessionalism