I am making a decoder for a substitution cipher using frequency analysis (the num of times a letter pops up in a sentence, for example, 'E' is the most used letter, followed by 'T'). Anyways, I've got some of it working but I'm stuck on one part. I need to generate a new key based on the frequency analysis of the encoded sample. Here's what I have: //This method creates a new array of characters beginning with the most used letters from the sample. public static char[] MakeAlphaKey(char[]Alphabet, int[]FrequencyKey) { char[] AlphaKey = new char[26]; for(int a = 0; a < 26; a++) { AlphaKey[a] = Alphabet[Max(FrequencyKey)]; } return AlphaKey; } //Method to find most common letter //I think the problem is somewhere in this method with maxindex, but I cant figure out what. //FrequencyKey is a list of ints represented in Alphabetical order, so for example, FrequencyKey[0] = 5, which is the number of 'A's in the encoded text. FrequencyKey[1] is the number of B's. public static int Max(int FrequencyKey[]) { int max = 0; int maxindex = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) { if(FrequencyKey[i] > max) { max = FrequencyKey[i]; maxindex = i; FrequencyKey[i] = -1; } //Maybe add something here??? } return maxindex; } Any help would be appreciated. I know how to do the rest of the program already. It's just this one part is really frustrating.

Why do u set FrequencyKey[i] to -1 when u find a max candidate?? If it is so that it doesnt get picked up as the Max freq next time, then don't set it to -1 inside the loop, move it to just b4 u return the maxindex value.

Something like: FrequencyKey[maxindex] = -1 ; return maxindex ; int the Max(int[]) method.

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err just noticed it was the same guy =\ haha Thanks a bunch.