Palindrome tester with Java, ignoring spaces and punctuation

Question

I have the program made up until the point where it has to ignore and punctuations and spaces in the thread and I was wondering if anyone could help me with the coding for t

Answer 1

This code for determine if a word is a palindrome can be much more simplified. Find updated Code

String word;
int z;
int y = 0;
int i = 0;

char letter;

Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

System.out.print("Enter a word: ");
word = input.nextLine();

word = word.replaceAll("\\s+", "");
word = word.toLowerCase();

z = word.length()-1;
while (i <= z){

    if ((letter = word.charAt(i)) == (letter = word.charAt(z-i))){
        y += 1;
    }
    i += 1;
}

if (y == (z+1)){
    System.out.println("The word IS a palindrome");
}
else{
    System.out.println("The word is NOT a palindrome");
}

}
}