charAt not evaluating

Question

I am trying to write a function that will evaluate equality of characters in a string and return true if 3 in a row match. The charAt() doesn't seem to be working as the if statement always goes to the else block.

function myFunction(num1) 
{
var checkNum1;
  for (var i = 0; i < num1.length; i++)
  {
    if (num1.charAt(i) == num1.charAt(i+1) && num1.charAt(i) == num1.charAt(i+2))
    {
    checkNum1 = true;
    break;
    }
  }
  if (checkNum1 == true)
  {
  return true;
  }

  else
  {
  return false;
  }
}

What should I be doing to get the last "if" block to return true?

what did you pass to myFunction?accessing `i+1` isn't right. — Madhawa Priyashantha, Oct 05 '16 at 13:35
A string is passed to myFunction eg. 257986555213. I'm trying to identify when there are 3 numbers in a row that match (in the example the 5's). — B Minster, Oct 05 '16 at 13:36
Are you sure you're passing a string not a number? Please show us the exact code of the call that produces the unexpected result. — Bergi, Oct 05 '16 at 13:40
I was able to do it with your code only.How is it not running in your case. try debugging. [Fiddle](https://jsfiddle.net/ashish3x3/kafcyjtg/) — Cyclotron3x3, Oct 05 '16 at 13:40
This is something that I was trying to do on codewars, so I don't have anything besides this function. This was just something that I couldn't make work and it was bothering me. — B Minster, Oct 05 '16 at 13:42
@BrettMinster try adding `console.log(typeof num1, num1)` in the first line of the function and show us the output if you don't know the input. — Bergi, Oct 05 '16 at 13:47
In testing with console.log it looks like it never goes into the for loop at all. Any idea what might cause that behavior? — B Minster, Oct 05 '16 at 14:20

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 19 '16 at 09:47

The code that you have provided works fine with strings ie: myFunction("257986555213") returns true.

However, myFunction(257986555213) returns false as expected as charAt is a String method.

As a fail-safe approach, you can try adding the following line to your method at the beginning:

num1 += '';

This should convert your argument to string and you should get your results..

Hope it Helps!!

charAt not evaluating

1 Answers1