Dfyjkt

I am writing some code to check if two strings are anagrams, in Java. This is for the Anagrams problem on Hackerrank.

My code is failing only 1 of the 17 test cases, and I'm guessing it's due to invalid inputs. This is where my issue lies. At the very beginning of the method, I want to check if either input string is null or an empty string, and if it is, I return false.

This is the relevant code block -

private static boolean isAnagram(String a, String b) {
 System.out.println(a + " " + b);
 if( a == null || b == null || a.equals("") || b.equals("") ) 
 System.out.println("Inside");
 return false;
 

 HashMap<String, Integer> map1 = new HashMap<>();
 HashMap<String, Integer> map2 = new HashMap<>();

The problem is, when I test this method with invalid inputs, like "hello" and "", the if block doesn't seem to execute. I've tried replacing the .equals() method with .isEmpty() and .length() == 0, but no matter which method I use, the if doesn't work.

Using JShell, I've checked that if I create an empty string with "", all these methods work -

jshell> String a = ""
a ==> ""

jshell> a.isEmpty()
$2 ==> true

jshell> a.length()
$3 ==> 0

jshell> a.equals("")
$4 ==> true

jshell> a == null
$5 ==> false

jshell> "" == ""
$6 ==> true

jshell>

jshell> "".equals("")
$7 ==> true

jshell> "".length()

Is there a reason why this way of checking for empty string won't work in an if block?

UPDATE - Complete code on Pastebin

I see that you don't pass one test case, and it does not involve invalid inputs. You've missed one thing, you should take into consideration case sensitivity

a = a.toLowerCase();
b = b.toLowerCase();

Just make your strings lowercase after validation and it should be alright