isolate words in strings, change characters

i am a complete idiot with programming. i have an assignment due tomorrow.
it has to take a simple user input, print out the length of the input, the length of the first and last words (causing me the most trouble). then switch some characters around several times and print each new text

Hi Nick,
shall we do your work? I would recommend a StringBuffer.
Regards
Torsten

If you read the user input into a String then you can use one of the methods of String to find the length.
You can use another method of String to find the first space (everything before it would be the first word) and the last space (everything after it would be the last word).
You can also achieve similar results by reading the user input into an array of chars and then using a for loop to find the spaces.
If you get some code together, post it here and maybe we can help you get through this.

I am moving this to "Java in General (beginners)".

I'm doing about the same assignment as Nick Allen only I have to produce four files- ServerModel, ClientModel, ServerView and ClientView.
Here is my

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.text.*;
public class ClientModel{
PrintWriter osToServer;
BufferedReader isFromServer;
String word;
char[] dst= array[];
public static void main(String[] args){
new ClientModel();
}//end of main
public ClientModel(){
try{
Socket connectToServer = new Socket("localhost",8000);
isFromServer= new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connectToServer.getInputStream()));
osToServer= new PrintWriter(connectToServer.getOutputStream(),true);
while(true){
System.out.println("Enter word: ");
word = CspInput.readString();
osToServer.println(word);
}
}//end of try
catch(IOException ex){
System.err.println(ex);
}//end of catch
}//end of constructor
public void getChars(int srcBegin,
                     int srcEnd,
                     char[] dst,
                     int dstBegin){
                     
                     }//end of get getChars
}
/*class ReverseString {
    public static String reverseIt(String source) {
        int i, len = source.length();
        StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer(len);
        for (i = (len - 1); i >= 0; i--) {
            dest.append(source.charAt(i));
        }
        return dest.toString();
    }
}
 */

can someone help me?!? thanks so much...