In the While Loop Experimentation activity it was necessary to check the length of the input string before performing the character comparison. Which of the following best describe why this was necessary? You are welcome to references your observation notes to answer this question.

The input string variable is initialized to an empty string $("")$ which by definition contains no characters. However, this is not an issue in this comparison and when the length check is removed $($as indicated in the guide$),$ the code did not throw an Exception.

The input string length checked so that the program will exit immediately if the user enters an empty string $""$ meaning that it has a length of $-1.$

The input string variable is initialized to an empty string $("")$ which by definition contains no characters. When we use the input.charAt$(0)$ method call in the comparison the code will throw an StringIndexOutOfBoundsException because there is no character at index $0.$ By performing the length check and using the && operator, we can short$-$circuit if the input string is empty and prevent the Exception from occurring.

The input string length checked so that the program will exit immediately if the user enters an empty string $""$ meaning that it has a length of $0.$