Word search in a puzzle

Question

newbie here i have written a code to search for words in a puzzle but the word search does not seem to return anything after i run the program. i stored the dictionary in a binary tree. i need to check the every combination of characters against that in my tree.Could you please help. Thank you....

this is the solve method

public String solve() 
{
    int row = puzzle.length;
    int coloumns = puzzle[0].length;
    this.foundWords = new ArrayList<String>();
    if (this.dictionary == null)
        return null;
    for (int i = 0; i < this.puzzle[0].length; ++i)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < this.puzzle.length; ++j)
        {
            if (this.getWord(i, j, 0, 1) == null)
                continue;
            if(this.inDictionary(this.getWord(i,j,0,1)))
                this.foundWords.add(getWord(i,j,0,1).concat("\n" + this.mapDirection(0)));
            for(int d = 0; d<8; ++d)
            {
                int n = 2;
                String word = this.getWord(i,j,d,n);
                while(word !=null)
                {
                    if(this.inDictionary(word))
                        this.foundWords.add(word.concat("\n" + this.mapDirection(d)));
                    word = this.getWord(i,j,d,n);
                    n++;
                }
            }               

        }
    }
    String temp = "";
    for(int i= 0; i < foundWords.size(); i++)
    {
        temp = temp.concat(foundWords.get(i));
    }
    return temp;
} 

this gets the word..

public String getWord(int row, int column, int d, int length)
{ 
    if (length < 1)
        return null;
    d %= 8;

    StringBuilder rBuild = new StringBuilder();
    rBuild.append(this.puzzle[row][column]);
    length--;
    while (length >= 0)
    {
        if ((d == 3) || (d == 4) || (d == 5))
            column--;
        if ((d == 1) || (d == 0) || (d == 7))
            column++;

        if ((d == 1) || (d == 2) || (d == 3))
            row--;
        if ((d == 5) || (d == 6) || (d == 7))
            row++;

        if ((row < 0) || (row >= this.puzzle.length)
        || (column < 0) || (column >= this.puzzle[0].length))
            return null;

            rBuild.append(this.puzzle[row][column]);
            length--;
    }

    return rBuild.toString();
}

for the direction..

public String mapDirection(int direction)
{
    direction %=8;
    switch(direction)
    {
        case 0: return " right";
        case 1: return " up and right";
        case 2: return " up";
        case 3: return " up and left";
        case 4: return  " left";
        case 5: return " down and left";
        case 6: return " down and left";
        case 7: return " down and right";
    }
    return null;
}

Answer 1

You might look at the approach taken in Jumble , which implements the first algorithm shown here . It's faster and scales better than the permutation (second) approach.

Answer 2

I think that in getWord , this line:

while (length >= 0)

should be

while (length > 0)