How to get a program to continue reading input after if statements are fulfilled (Morse Translator)

Question

Before I begin, I am a novice programmer having only been doing this for about a day.

How do I get my program to continue reading my input after an input has been fulfilled? for the below code, which is for a morse code to english translator I am trying to make, when I input morse, for example .-, it gives me the correct output, A. But when I combine morse letters, example .--..., which should be AB, the else statement activates. What should I do?

import java.util.Scanner;

public class MorseTranslator {

public static void main(String[] args) {

     System.out.println("Please enter morse code you wish to translate.");
     Scanner sc =new Scanner(System.in);
     String morse = sc.next();



     if (morse.equals(" ")) {
         System.out.print(" ");
        }
     if (morse.equals(".-")){
         System.out.print("A");
        }
     if (morse.equals("-...")){
         System.out.print("B");
        }
     if (morse.equals("-.-.")){
         System.out.print("C");
        }
     if (morse.equals("-..")){
         System.out.print("D");
        }
     if (morse.equals(".")){
         System.out.print("E");
        }
     if (morse.equals("..-.")){
         System.out.print("F");
        }


     else System.out.println("Please input morse code.");

}

}

Answer 1

String.equals() compares complete strings, so .--... will never be equals to .- , so what you need is to 'look for' inside the morse String, using String.indexOf()

 if(morse.indexOf(".-")!=-1){
    System.out.print("A");
    //need more magic here
 }

now you need to 'substract' or takeout those two characters from the morse string, and repeat the searching with a loop.

 if(morse.indexOf(".-")!=-1){
    System.out.print("A");
    morse=morse.substring(morse.indexOf(".-")+2); // where 2 morse characters
    continue; //your hypothetical loop
 }
 if(morse.indexOf("-...")!=-1){
    System.out.print("B");
    morse=morse.substring(morse.indexOf("-...")+4); // where 4 morse characters
    continue; //your hypothetical loop
 }
 ...

don't forget to loop until there's no more data to process