How to convert a long string into an array for encoding and decoding purposes?

[Dan Lyles]

After a message is entered by the user, I must either encode it or decode it. In order to do so, I am supposed to input two strings to represent my table, but am unsure how to convert them to an array to do so.

private static final String CODE1=
"HTNZUL5m3lDQch enpIuORws1jPgVt zKWbfBxXSArdayC JkvqGiF2YoM4E";

private static final String PLAIN =
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRSTUVWXYZabc defghijklmnopqr stuvwxyz ,.;:";

[Dheeraj Joshi]

I am not very clear about your question.
But i give some suggestion as i understood your question.

Take a character array of length = String length

Iterate the string and use charAt(index) method and fetch the character at ith position and put it in character array.

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi