soundex and char arrays

This program is a simple soundex generator. The idea is that it will prompt you for a word and the program will display the soundex code for that word. Your soundex code MUST be in a static class method, and it MUST follow the specification provided, this will help you to reuse the code later.

Your main program will ~~ask the user to input ten(10) words~~ read words until end of file , for each word you will display the word and its soundex code.

the function spec

Your soundex function needs to meet the requirements listed.

input - a constant string containing a word
output - none
return - a string containing the soundex code for the input word

This function must not damage the input word ( hence the constant ).

the algorithm

the first letter of the code is the first letter of the input word.
the remaining ( starting at the second letter ) letters of the code are any codes that are not zero and different from the code of the previous letter. This means that you will need the code for every letter including the first one.

Soundex codes for this assingment are 1 letter and 4 digits ( plus the terminating NULL ). But you will want to store the digits as characters so the entire code is the same type. The code contains the first letter of the word (case doesn't matter). and the the others are mapped to numbers. The mappings are provided below, in the table. Any time a code is the same as the code of the previous character, it is discarded. The default is "Z0000".

Letters	Numbers
b,p,f,v	1
c,s,k,g,j,q,x,z	2
d,t	3
l	4
m,n	5
r	6
All Others	0

Examples

A friend of mine has the last name is Sullivan, so the 4 digit soundex is:
Sullivan
20440105
S4150

Your soundex codes for this need to be 1 letter and 4 numbers. It will be easier if you store everything as char values.

Examples:

TOMORROW T5600
tenure   T5600
damn     D5000
spell    S1400
Euler    E4600
Gauss    G2000  
Hilbert  H4163
Knuth    K5300  
Lloyd    L3000  
Lukasiewicz L2220
spellllllll s1400
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala L4444
1234     Z0000

Here is a sample run from mine

This program is due July 7th.

useful Java API calls

String.toLowerCase
String.toCharArray
Character.isLetter
Character.toUpperCase

Goals

convert an alogrithm to code
write a simple program
write and use a function
manipulate data in a character array
follow directions