Check string for palindrome

Upvote picture Upvote · Nov 9, 2010 · Viewed 344.7k times · Source

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction.

To check whether a word is a palindrome I get the char array of the word and compare the chars. I tested it and it seems to work. However I want to know if it is right or if there is something to improve.

Here is my code:

public class Aufg1 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String wort = "reliefpfpfeiller";
        char[] warray = wort.toCharArray(); 
        System.out.println(istPalindrom(warray));       
    }

    public static boolean istPalindrom(char[] wort){
        boolean palindrom = false;
        if(wort.length%2 == 0){
            for(int i = 0; i < wort.length/2-1; i++){
                if(wort[i] != wort[wort.length-i-1]){
                    return false;
                }else{
                    palindrom = true;
                }
            }
        }else{
            for(int i = 0; i < (wort.length-1)/2-1; i++){
                if(wort[i] != wort[wort.length-i-1]){
                    return false;
                }else{
                    palindrom = true;
                }
            }
        }
        return palindrom;
    }
}

Answer

dcp picture dcp · Nov 9, 2010

Why not just:

public static boolean istPalindrom(char[] word){
    int i1 = 0;
    int i2 = word.length - 1;
    while (i2 > i1) {
        if (word[i1] != word[i2]) {
            return false;
        }
        ++i1;
        --i2;
    }
    return true;
}

Example:

Input is "andna".
i1 will be 0 and i2 will be 4.

First loop iteration we will compare word[0] and word[4]. They're equal, so we increment i1 (it's now 1) and decrement i2 (it's now 3).
So we then compare the n's. They're equal, so we increment i1 (it's now 2) and decrement i2 (it's 2).
Now i1 and i2 are equal (they're both 2), so the condition for the while loop is no longer true so the loop terminates and we return true.