alternative to (x.equals) for (!=)

Question

Okay, so for my coding project i need to complete the infamous Vowels-R-Us program. I am having trouble with a logic error.

This problem-code is specified inside the comment titled "BROKEN CODE"

In this project, Vowels are defined as A S C or L and all other letters are considered consonants.

the test date or word given is "PDAE"

What i am trying to do in this method is detect whether the end of my string, word, ends in a consonant or a vowel or two consonants/vowels. Based on whether it ends in one or two, it sets wordEnd to its respective value:

private static void checkEnd() {

This checks if the last letter is a vowel, if true, sets wordEnd to 1:

if ("A".equals(word.substring(word.length())) || "C".equals(word.substring(word.length())) || "S".equals(word.substring(word.length())) || "L".equals(word.substring(word.length()))) {
                 wordEnd = 2;

This will check to see if the second to last word is a vowel as well, then sets wordEnd to 3:

   if ("A".equals(word.substring(word.length() - 1)) || "C".equals(word.substring(word.length() - 1)) || "S".equals(word.substring(word.length() - 1)) || "L".equals(word.substring(word.length() - 1))) {
                             wordEnd = 3;
       }

}

This sets wordEnd to 2, assuming the first if statement output's false:

else {
             wordEnd = 3;

THIS IS THE BROKEN CODE I THINK:

 if ("A" != (word.substring(word.length() - 1)) && "C" != (word.substring(word.length() - 1)) && "S" != (word.substring(word.length() - 1)) && "L" != (word.substring(word.length() - 1)))
                wordEnd = 1;

The code should theoretically output false and leave the value of wordEnd at 1, but it comes out as true and sets it to 3..

I need an alternative to using != to compare the strings, what can i do for that?

This just prints the variable wordEnd, but always comes out to 3 for some reason...:

     /*
      * TEST CODE
     */ 
      System.out.println(wordEnd);
 }

}

MAJOR LOGIC EDIT

The last two statements. Else, then if:

i had to swap 1 and 3 because of a logic error. if the last if outputs false, then it should be outputting 1, for the last two not being two consonants. So my bad, but thanks to @clcto for helping me with my other error when not using !x.equals

Sorry for the continuous errors, i have only been coding for a couple months.

Answer 1

Negate the result of the equals() call:

!x.equals(y)