CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javastringcharacter
user2677095
user2677095

Reputation: 471

How to take first word of new paragraph into consideration?

I'm trying to build a program that takes in files and outputs the number of words in the file. It works perfectly when everything is under one whole paragraph. However, when there are multiple paragraphs, it doesn't take into account the first word of the new paragraph. For example, if a file reads "My name is John" , the program will output "4 words". However, if a file read"My Name Is John" with each word being a new paragraph, the program will output "1 word". I know it must be something about my if statement, but I assumed that there are spaces before the new paragraph that would take the first word in a new paragraph into account. Here is my code in general:

import java.io.*;
public class HelloWorld
{
    public static void main(String[]args)
    {
        try{
            // Open the file that is the first
            // command line parameter
            FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream("health.txt");
            // Use DataInputStream to read binary NOT text.
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fstream));
            String strLine;

            int word2 =0;
            int word3 =0;
            //Read File Line By Line
            while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   {
                // Print the content on the console
                ;
                int wordLength = strLine.length();
                System.out.println(strLine);
                for(int i = 0 ; i < wordLength -1 ; i++)
                    {
                        Character a = strLine.charAt(i);
                        Character b= strLine.charAt(i + 1);
                        **if(a == ' ' && b != '.' &&b != '?' && b != '!' && b != ' ' )**
                            {
                                word2++;
                                //doesnt take into account 1st character of new paragraph
                            }
                    }
                word3 = word2 + 1;
            }



            System.out.println("There are " + word3 + " "
                               + "words in your file.");
            //Close the input stream
            in.close();
        }catch (Exception e){//Catch exception if any
            System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
        }


    }
}

I've tried adjusting the if statement multiple teams, but it does not seem to make a difference. Does anyone know where I'm messing up?

I'm a pretty new user and asked a similar question a couple days back with people accusing me of demanding too much of users, so hopefully this narrows my question a bit. I just am really confused on why its not taking into account the first word of a new paragraph. Please let me know if you need any more information. Thanks!!

Upvotes: 4

Views: 499

Answers (4)

vs777
vs777

Reputation: 644

I am not sure what you mean by "paragraph", however I tried to use capital letters as you suggested and it worked perfectly fine. I used Appache Commons IO library

 package Project1;

import java.io.*;
import org.apache.commons.io.*;
public class HelloWorld
{
    private static String fileStr = "";
    private static String[] tokens;
    public static void main(String[]args)
    {


    try{
        // Open the file that is the first
        // command line parameter
        try {
             File f = new File("c:\\TestFile\\test.txt");
             fileStr = FileUtils.readFileToString(f);
             tokens = fileStr.split(" ");
             System.out.println("Words in file : " + tokens.length);
        }
    catch(Exception ex){
        System.out.println(ex);
    }           

    }catch (Exception e){//Catch exception if any
        System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }


}

}

Upvotes: 0

ElliotSchmelliot
ElliotSchmelliot

Reputation: 8402

I personally prefer a regular Scanner with token-based scanning for this sort of thing. How about something like this:

int words = 0;
Scanner lineScan = new Scanner(new File("fileName.txt"));
while (lineScan.hasNext()) {
    Scanner tokenScan = new Scanner(lineScan.Next());
    while (tokenScan.hasNext()) {
        tokenScan.Next();
        words++;
    }
}

This iterates through every line in the file. And for every line in the file, it iterates through every token (in this case words) and increments the word count.

Upvotes: 0

Jason C
Jason C

Reputation: 40406

Firstly, your counting logic is incorrect. Consider:

word3 = word2 + 1;

Think about what this does. Every time through your loop, when you read a line, you essentially count the words in that line, then reset the total count to word2 + 1. Hint: If you want to count the total number in the file, you'd want to increment word3 each time, rather than replace it with the current line's word count.

Secondly, your word parsing logic is slightly off. Consider the case of a blank line. You would see no words in it, but you treat the word count in the line as word2 + 1, which means you are incorrectly counting a blank line as 1 word. Hint: If the very first character on the line is a letter, then the line starts with a word.

Your approach is reasonable although your implementation is slightly flawed. As an alternate option, you may want to consider String.split() on each line. The number of elements in the resulting array is the number of words on the line.

By the way, you can increase readability of your code, and make debugging easier, if you use meaningful names for your variables (e.g. totalWords instead of word3).

Upvotes: 1

criszhao
criszhao

Reputation: 134

if your paragraph is not started by whitespace, then your if condition won't count the first word. "My name is John" , the program will output "4 words", this is not correct, because you miss the first word but add one after. Try this:

String strLine;
strLine = strLine.trime();//remove leading and trailing whitespace
String[] words = strLine.split(" ");
int numOfWords = words.length;

Upvotes: 0

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