The technique that a developer can use to apply method parameters as carriers for return data is to accept parameters that are mutable and to mutate the passed-in objects’ state.

I have blogged on this approach previously in posts Too Many Parameters in Java Methods, Part 3: Builder Pattern and NetBeans 7.2: Refactoring Parameterized Constructor As Builder.

At this point, the Scanner still returns a String, although the String contains only one character. To complete the use case, you must convert this one-character String into a single Java char with ...