Important Notice:

Practice-It will be discontinued as of November 1st, 2024. After this date, the website will remain online for a transitional period, but login will be restricted to University of Washington NetID authentication. This marks the next phase towards the platform's full retirement. Thank you for your use and support of the application over the years.

If you are looking for an alternative, a similar tool, CodeStepByStep, was developed independently by the original author of Practice-It, and is available at codestepbystep.com**

logo Practice-It logo

Main Page → Problems → Solve a Problem

removeShorterStrings

Language/Type: Java ArrayList Collections
Author: Roy McElmurry

Write a method removeShorterStrings that takes an ArrayList of strings as a parameter and that removes from each successive pair of values the shorter string in the pair. For example, suppose that an ArrayList called "list" contains the following values: 

["four", "score", "and", "seven", "years", "ago"]

In the first pair of strings ("four" and "score") the shorter string is "four". In the second pair of strings ("and" and "seven") the shorter String is "and". In the third pair of strings ("years" and "ago") the shorter string is "ago". Therefore, the call: removeShorterStrings(list); should remove these shorter strings, leaving the list with the following sequence of values after the method finishes executing: 

["score", "seven", "years"]

If there is a tie (both strings have the same length), your method should remove the first string in the pair. If there is an odd number of strings in the list, the final value should be kept in the list. For example, if the list contains the following values: 

["to", "be", "or", "not", "to", "be", "hamlet"]

After calling removeShorterStrings, it should contain the following: 

["be", "not", "be", "hamlet"]

You may not use any other arrays, lists, or other data structures to help you solve this problem, though you can create as many simple variables as you like. You may assume that the list passed is not null.

Type your solution here:


This is a method problem. Write a Java method as described. Do not write a complete program or class; just the method(s) above.

You must log in before you can solve this problem.


Log In

If you do not understand how to solve a problem or why your solution doesn't work, please contact your TA or instructor.
If something seems wrong with the site (errors, slow performance, incorrect problems/tests, etc.), please

Is there a problem? Contact a site administrator.