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BJP4 Self-Check 1.12: DoubleSlash

Language/Type: Java basics escape sequences mystery println
Author: Marty Stepp (on 2016/09/08)

What is the output from the following Java program? (Assume that a tab is expanded into eight spaces.) 

public class Letter {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Dear \"DoubleSlash\" magazine,");
        System.out.println();
        System.out.println("\tYour publication confuses me. Is it");
        System.out.println("a \\\\ slash or a //// slash?");
        System.out.println("\nSincerely,");
        System.out.println("Susan \"Suzy\" Smith");
    }
}

(NOTE ABOUT SPACING: Many students fail this problem by not understanding how the \t character works, causing them to have the wrong number of spaces. A tab inserts multiple spaces until the total number of characters on the current line so far is a multiple of 8. So for example, in the string "hi\thello\tgoodbye\tbeautiful\thi", the first \t becomes 6 spaces (because "hi" is 2 characters, so it takes 6 more to get to 8), the second \t is 3 spaces (because "hello" is 5 characters wide, so it takes 3 more characters to get to 8), the third is 1 (because "goodbye" is 7 characters), and the fourth \t is 7 spaces (because "beautiful" is 9 characters, so it takes 7 more to get to 16, which is the next multiple of 8).

output

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