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Random Lowercase Letter
This page was last reviewed on Jun 7, 2023.
Dot Net Perls
Random lowercase letters. The letters are "r, p, x, m." They are lowercase. But they are randomly ordered, randomly generated with the Random class.
Random
We can represent lowercase ASCII letters with the numbers 0 through 25 inclusive. There are 26 lowercase letters. We turn ints to chars with a cast.
ASCII Table
Cast
Example program. This program uses Random to generate lowercase letters. These chars could be used to create random strings (or for other nefarious purposes).
Start We call nextInt with an exclusive bound of 26. This yields the values 0 through (and including) 25.
Then We add 97 to the values to adjust to the lowercase characters (97 is the ASCII code for lowercase A).
Warning This code does not handle international (Unicode) characters. It just handles lowercase ASCII letters. It is limited.
import java.util.Random; public class Program { public static void main(String[] args) { Random random = new Random(); // Generate 10 random lowercase letters. for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // Max value is exclusive. // ... So this returns 1, 2, through 25. int n = random.nextInt(26); // Add 97 to move from integer to the range A to Z. char value = (char) (n + 97); // Display our results. System.out.println(value + "..." + Integer.toString(n)); } } }
s...18 o...14 y...24 d...3 t...19 p...15 q...16 f...5 f...5 h...7
Some notes. This algorithm does not support characters with accents (like would be wanted in French). I like French and French is a good language, but this algorithm won't support it.
Other characters, like spaces, could be added to an output stream. We could add the chars to a StringBuilder. This could generate random text.
But for now, the simplest solution is sufficient. We generate lowercase "A" through "Z." The code should be encapsulated in a method.
Method
Dot Net Perls is a collection of tested code examples. Pages are continually updated to stay current, with code correctness a top priority.
Sam Allen is passionate about computer languages. In the past, his work has been recommended by Apple and Microsoft and he has studied computers at a selective university in the United States.
This page was last updated on Jun 7, 2023 (edit).
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