function to get second largest digit from a string

Question

I have to write a function that accepts a string and returns the second highest numerical digit in the user input as an integer. These are the rules I have to follow:

• Inputs with no numerical digits should return -1
• Inputs with only one numerical digit should return -1
• Non-numeric characters should be ignored
• Each numerical input should be treat individually, meaning in the event of a joint highest digit then the second highest digit will also be the highest digit

My code:

public static int secondDigit(String input) {

    try {
        int userInput = Integer.parseInt(input);

        char[] array = input.toCharArray();

        int biggest = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
        int secondBiggest = Integer.MIN_VALUE;

        for(int i =0; i < array.length; i++) 
        {
            System.out.println("Array: "+array[i]);

            for(int j = 0; j < array[i]; j++)
            {
                if(array[i] > biggest) 
                {
                    secondBiggest = biggest;
                    biggest = array[i];
                }
                else if(array[i] > secondBiggest && array[i] != biggest)
                {
                    secondBiggest = array[i];
                }
            }

        }

        System.out.println(secondBiggest);

        return userInput;
    }catch(Exception e) {
        System.out.println("-1");

    }
    return -1;
    // Your code goes here
}

"abc:1231234" should return 3
"123123" should return 3

Currently this is the code and it returns 51 when i give it an input of "123123".

Answer 1

Your code is almost correct, the only problem is that what you print is the char at that position, the char is '3' and has an ascii value of 51. To fix this you need to parse an int from the char.