Condition to point out Error in line formatting not being met

I have a program which reads a file and enforces a certain format in every line. If a line has a format error, it prints a line below it indicating which error it was.

For each line, From column 1 to 13 and 77 to 80, no formatting rules are enforced, so I don’t care about dots in these columns.

For the case of the dot character, every dot must not be preceded by white space, and it must be followed by white space.

I have a condition to check for this, and at a glance it seems right, but it’s still not catching errors in dot formatting.

public static boolean checkLineFormatErrors(String line){
int errorCount;
if(line.contains(".")){ 
                        errorCount = 0;
                        char[] charArr = line.toCharArray();
                        boolean problemWithDot = false;
                        for(int i = 0; i < charArr.length;i++){
                                if(i < charArr.length - 1 
                        && i > 12 && i < 76 
                        && charArr[i] == '.' && (charArr[i-1] == ' ' || charArr[i+1] != ' ')){
                                    problemWithDot = true;
                                    break;
                                }
                            }
                        if(problemWithDot){
                            errorMessage = "One or more dots do not follow the line format for this file.";
                            errorCount++;
                            if(errorCount > 1){
                                System.out.println(errorMessage);
                            } 
                            else{
                                System.out.println(line + errorMessage);
                            }
                        }
                    }
return problemWithDot
}

All of my other methods for catching errors in format for other symbols work, it’s only the dot one that doesn’t.

For example

00012       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION .
00013       DATA DIVISION.
00014       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
00015        77 NUMERO1 PIC 9(2) VALUE ZEROS .

Line 12 and 15 should have an error message below them, because their final dot is preceded by a space.

(If you’re wondering “Hey isn’t that last bit of code Cobol?? Why are you not adding a cobol tag?” Yes those last lines are cobol! This is not a cobol issue because the program for checking the errors is made in Java only. Cobol is only a way to test the file to enforce its rules.)

Answer

By fixing your loop, it works, the main problem being with

i < charArr.length - 1

when the dot is at the end

for(int i = 12; i < charArr.length && i < 76;i++)
{
    if(charArr[i] == '.' && (charArr[i-1] == ' ' || 
                            charArr[Math.min(charArr.length -1, i+1)] != ' '))
   {
        problemWithDot = true;
        break;
   }
}

note

charArr[i+1] != ' ' is likely to cause problem so check that i + 1 does not exceed the array length.

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Answer