Palindrome Checker

Easy
44
1
70.1% Acceptance

In this lab, you will create a method named isPalindrome in the Main class that checks if a given string is a palindrome. A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequences of characters that reads the same forward and backward (ignoring spaces, punctuation, and capitalization).

Requirements:

  • Your method should have the following signature: public static boolean isPalindrome(String text).
  • The method should return true if the input string is a palindrome and false if it is not.
  • Only consider alphabetic characters; ignore spaces, numbers, punctuation, and capitalization when determining if a string is a palindrome.

Edge Cases:

  • An empty string is considered a palindrome.
  • Strings with only one letter are considered palindromes.
  • Strings that become palindromes when non-alphabetic characters are removed should return true.

Examples:

  • isPalindrome("racecar") should return true as "racecar" is a palindrome.
  • isPalindrome("A man, a plan, a canal ? Panama") should return true because, when removing all non-alphabetic characters and ignoring case, "amanaplanacanalpanama" is a palindrome.

Implement the isPalindrome method, considering the above constraints, and pass all the challenges to complete this lab.

Challenges Information

Challenge 1: Verify Method Signature

Ensure that your Main class contains a method named isPalindrome that accepts a single String argument and returns a boolean value. This method should determine if the input string is a palindrome, considering only alphabet characters and ignoring case, spaces, and special characters.

Challenge 2: Non-Palindrome String Test

Implement the isPalindrome method to correctly return false when passed the string 'codedamn'. Remember that the method should return false for any string that is not a palindrome, considering the special character handling as described.

Challenge 3: Simple Palindrome Test

Your isPalindrome method should return true when testing the string 'racecar'. This challenge checks that your method can identify a straightforward palindrome where the string reads the same forwards and backwards.

Challenge 4: Complex Palindrome with Special Characters and Spaces

Enhance the isPalindrome method to return true for the string 'A man, a plan, a canal – Panama'. This test ensures your method handles more complex cases where non-alphabetic characters and spaces must be ignored, and case differences are not considered.