So in Java class today, I got to write a lotto ticket program using an array, a nifty method, some string concatenation and a couple other cool Java tricks.

The spec said to create a getLottoTicket method that would create a 5-element array of random numbers between 1 and 47, then add a “mega” random number between 1 and 27. The main method would let the user choose how many lotto tickets to buy, then print out the resulting tickets.

Here’s what I wrote:

// SuperLotto.java
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Scanner;


public class SuperLotto 
{
    public static String getLottoTicket()
        {
            //create the lottoTicket string and initialize to separator
            String lottoTicket = "*****\n";
            
            // create random number generator
            Random lottoNumbers = new Random();
            
            // create an array of 5 random numbers and sort it
            int [] ticket = new int[5];
            for( int counter = 0; counter < ticket.length; ++counter )
            {
                ticket[counter] = (1 + lottoNumbers.nextInt(47) );
            }
            Arrays.sort( ticket );
            // walk through the sorted array,
            // adding each element to the lotto ticket string
            for(int counter = 0; counter < ticket.length; ++counter )
            {
                lottoTicket += ticket[counter];
                lottoTicket += " ";
            }
                
            //add the mega number & separator to the string and return it
            lottoTicket += "MEGA: ";
            lottoTicket += (1 + lottoNumbers.nextInt(27) );
            lottoTicket += "\n*****\n\n";
            return lottoTicket;
        }

    public static void main( String [] args )
    {
        // create a variable for number of tickets and get user input
        int numberOfTickets;
        Scanner input = new Scanner( System.in );
        System.out.print( "How many tickets do you want? " );
        numberOfTickets = input.nextInt();
        
        // print the ticket(s)
        for( int counter = 1; counter <= numberOfTickets; ++counter)
        {
            System.out.printf( "LOTTO TICKET %d:\n", counter );
            System.out.print( getLottoTicket() );
        }
        
        System.out.print( "\n\nProgrammed by Jolie O'Dell.\n\n" );
    }
}

If this helps you at all, I’m ever so glad.

Also, big freakin’ ups to programmer Greg Houston for creating this lovely code-to-HTML app. Dude, I can’t tell you how much I love you for this. It’ll make blogging about code — both here and probably on Mashable — a hell of a lot easier.

Image courtesy of journeyscoffee.