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There are three things I see as being significant issues with your code, and also a suggestion about your method’s name.

Orphaned Else

When you have an if-statement with a guaranteed return in it, there’s no need for an else-block. Your code would be better as:

if (in >= max) {
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}
return String.valueOf(in);

Input validation

• bad orders: your code will produce unexpected results for values with an order outside the range of 1 – 10. An order of −1 implies a "max" of 0.1, which will become 0, which will mean values like 10 will be presented as -1+ ... which is hard to fathom.
• bad values: Negative input values will cause consternation. An order of 2 implies 2-digits of value, but the input -12345 will output as -12345. Your code does not have a good way of expressing negative input values, so I don’t know what to recommend other than avoiding them entirely, and throwing an IllegalArgumentException for negative input.

Edge Cases

Orders larger than 10 will effectively truncate to Integer.MAX_VALUE, which makes Integer.MAX_VALUE an interesting input... An order of 10 and an input of Integer.MAX_VALUE, would normally imply an output of 2147483647, but you respond with 2147483646+.

Name

The term "clamp" is often used when confronted with this... where a value is clamped to be within a range, or limit. I would use that as the function name.

Solution

I would recommend transforming your internal logic to use long, and be done with it... 😉

public static String clamp(int in, int order) {
 if (order < 0 || in < 0) {
 throw new IllegalArgumentException("Inputs are required to be positive");
 }
 long max = (long)Math.pow(10, order);
 if (max > Integer.MAX_VALUE || in < max) {
 return String.valueOf(in);
 }
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}

There are three things I see as being significant issues with your code, and also a suggestion about your method’s name.

Orphaned Else

When you have an if-statement with a guaranteed return in it, there’s no need for an else-block. Your code would be better as:

if (in >= max) {
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}
return String.valueOf(in);

Input validation

• bad orders: your code will produce unexpected results for values with an order outside the range of 1 – 10. An order of −1 implies a "max" of 0.1, which will become 0, which will mean values like 10 will be presented as -1+ ... which is hard to fathom.
• bad values: Negative input values will cause consternation. An order of 2 implies 2-digits of value, but the input -12345 will output as -12345. Your code does not have a good way of expressing negative input values, so I don’t know what to recommend other than avoiding them entirely, and throwing an IllegalArgumentException for negative input.

Edge Cases

Orders larger than 10 will effectively truncate to Integer.MAX_VALUE, which makes Integer.MAX_VALUE an interesting input... An order of 10 and an input of Integer.MAX_VALUE, would normally imply an output of 2147483647, but you respond with 2147483646+.

Name

The term "clamp" is often used when confronted with this... where a value is clamped to be within a range, or limit. I would use that as the function name.

Solution

I would recommend transforming your internal logic to use long, and be done with it.

public static String clamp(int in, int order) {
 if (order < 0 || in < 0) {
 throw new IllegalArgumentException("Inputs are required to be positive");
 }
 long max = (long)Math.pow(10, order);
 if (max > Integer.MAX_VALUE || in < max) {
 return String.valueOf(in);
 }
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}

There are three things I see as being significant issues with your code, and also a suggestion about your method's name.

##Orphaned Else

When you have an if-statement with a guaranteed return in it, there's no need for an else-block. Your code would be better as:

if (in >= max) {
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}
return String.valueOf(in);

##Input validation

• bad orders: your code will produce unexpected results for values with an order outside the range of 1..10. An order of -1 implies a "max" of 0.1, which will become 0, which will mean values like 10 will be presented as -1+ .... which is hard to fathom.
• bad values: Negative input values will cause consternation. An order of 2 implies 2-digits of value, but the input -12345 will output as -12345. Your code does not have a good way of expressing negative input values, so I don't know what to recommend other than avoiding them entirely, and throwing an IllegalArgumentException for negative input.

##Edge Cases

Orders larger than 10 will effectively truncate to Integer.MAX_VALUE, which makes Integer.MAX_VALUE an interesting input..... An order of 10 and an input of Integer.MAX_VALUE, would normally imply an output of 2147483647, but you respond with 2147483646+

##Name

The term "clamp" is often used when confronted with this.... where a value is clamped to be within a range, or limit. I would use that as the function name.

##Solution

I would recommend transfroming your internal logic to use long, and be done with it... ;-)

public static String clamp(int in, int order) {
 if (order < 0 || in < 0) {
 throw new IllegalArgumentException("Inputs are required to be positive");
 }
 long max = (long)Math.pow(10, order);
 if (max > Integer.MAX_VALUE || in < max) {
 return String.valueOf(in);
 }
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}

There are three things I see as being significant issues with your code, and also a suggestion about your method’s name.

Orphaned Else

When you have an if-statement with a guaranteed return in it, there’s no need for an else-block. Your code would be better as:

if (in >= max) {
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}
return String.valueOf(in);

Input validation

• bad orders: your code will produce unexpected results for values with an order outside the range of 1 – 10. An order of −1 implies a "max" of 0.1, which will become 0, which will mean values like 10 will be presented as -1+ ... which is hard to fathom.
• bad values: Negative input values will cause consternation. An order of 2 implies 2-digits of value, but the input -12345 will output as -12345. Your code does not have a good way of expressing negative input values, so I don’t know what to recommend other than avoiding them entirely, and throwing an IllegalArgumentException for negative input.

Edge Cases

Orders larger than 10 will effectively truncate to Integer.MAX_VALUE, which makes Integer.MAX_VALUE an interesting input... An order of 10 and an input of Integer.MAX_VALUE, would normally imply an output of 2147483647, but you respond with 2147483646+.

Name

The term "clamp" is often used when confronted with this... where a value is clamped to be within a range, or limit. I would use that as the function name.

Solution

I would recommend transforming your internal logic to use long, and be done with it... 😉

public static String clamp(int in, int order) {
 if (order < 0 || in < 0) {
 throw new IllegalArgumentException("Inputs are required to be positive");
 }
 long max = (long)Math.pow(10, order);
 if (max > Integer.MAX_VALUE || in < max) {
 return String.valueOf(in);
 }
 return String.valueOf(max - 1) + "+";
}