SyllableCounter counts the Syllables in a word

Question

I am trying to work on a syllable counter that counts the syllables in the string I enter. Here are the instructions. -

Syllables are really useful for a lot of things. They are defined according to the following rules involving
consonants (non-vowels) and vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y):
    Starting y omitted:
        (a) when words begin with y, we don’t count the starting y as a vowel. (we are
            assuming there are no words that start with y followed immediately by a consonant)
    Silent e omitted:
        (a) when e is the last letter of a word, we’ll assume it is silent, unless the word is café or
            entrée (words borrowed from French). (* we’ll ignore all other words to simplify)
            For simplification, it may be best to create a new String without this silent e, before
            checking for more syllables.
    With the silent-e omitted, one-syllable units:
        (a) have a single vowel.
        (b) have two vowels that are the same letter in succession.
        (c) have two vowels in immediate succession that are ei, ie, ea, ou, ey, ay, oy, uy, ai.
        (d) have three vowels in immediate succession that are eau, iou (* yes, there are
            exceptions to this that we are ignoring here).
    With the silent-e omitted, two-syllable units:
        (a) two vowels in immediate succession where the vowels are different letters not
            following the rule above. For instance, oe, io, oi.
        (b) three vowels in immediate succession not following the rule above where the last
            vowel is not a silent e. For instance (“eye”) as in “meyer.”
Generate a program called SyllableCounter that counts syllables in a word or sentence (maximum one
line). Assume the user will not use any punctuation. Pseudocode and a testing plan are required.
Do not print in main().

Sample output:
Please enter your word or sentence, followed by a carriage return.
Sally where are you going
Your entry has 7 syllables.

Here is my current code (It compiles, but has a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException -

/* 
 * SyllableCounter.java
 * Prints the number of syllables based on an inputed string
 * 
 * Testing - What should work - All strings with letter characters
 *      What shouldn't work - Number values
 */

import java.util.Scanner; //import the scanner

public class SyllableCounter //class is SyllableCounter
{

    public static void main (String args[]) //main() method header
    { 

         String string = "";


         string = getInput(); //call getInput()
         int totalCount = calc(string); //call calc()
         printOut(totalCount); //call printOut()

    }

    public static String getInput() //getInput() method
    {
         Scanner console = new Scanner (System.in); //create an instance of the scanner
         System.out.println("Please enter your word or sentence, followed by a carrige return");
         String input = console.nextLine(); //get the inputted string and return it
         return input;
    }

    public static int calc (String string) 
    {
        //int finalCount = 0;
        //int index = string.indexOf(' ');
        return calcWord(string);

    }

    public static int calcWord(String word) //calc() method
    {

         int count = 0;
         //for loop goes through all charectors
         int length = word.length();
         for (int i = 0; i<length; i++)
         {
            if ((word == "entree") || (word == "cafe")) 
                return 2;

            else if (i==0)//if i is 0
            {
                if (word.charAt(i) == 'a' //if letter is a,e,i,o or u
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'e'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'i'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'o'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'u')
                        count++ ; //count ++
                else //else
                    {} //nothing
            }
            else if (i==word.length()-1) //else if i is the last letter of the string
            {
                if ( (word.charAt(i) == 'a') || (word.charAt(i) == 'i') || (word.charAt(i) == 'o') || (word.charAt(i) == 'u') || (word.charAt(i) == 'y') ) 
                //else if letter is a,i,o,u or y (also 2 or 3 in a row)
                {
                    count ++ ;//count ++
                }

                else //else
                    {} //nothing
            }

            else if (word.charAt(word.length()-1) == 'e') {
                if (length >= i+2)
                    if ( word.substring(i,i+3) == "eau"
                        || word.substring(i,i+3) == "iou" )
                    {
                        count++;
                        i+=2;
                    }
                    else if ( word.substring(i,i+2) == "ei"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ie"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ea"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ou"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ey"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ay"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "oy"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "uy"
                            || word.substring(i,i+2) == "ai" ) 
                    {
                        count++;
                        i++;
                    }
                    else if( word.substring(i, i+2) == "oe"
                        || word.substring(i, i+2) == "io"
                        || word.substring(i, i+2) == "oi" )
                    {
                        count+=2;
                        i++;
                    }
                }
                else {
                    if (word.charAt(i) =='a'
                            || word.charAt(i) == 'e'
                            || word.charAt(i) == 'i'
                            || word.charAt(i) == 'o'
                            || word.charAt(i) == 'u' )
                    {
                        count++;
                    }
                }


         if  (!(word.charAt(word.length()-1) == 'e'))
        {
                if ( word.substring(i,i+3) == "eau")
                {
                        count++;
                        i+=2;
                }
                else if (word.charAt(i) == 'a'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'e'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'i'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'o'
                        || word.charAt(i) == 'u' )
                {
                    count++;
                } 
            }
            else if (word.charAt(i) == 'a'
                    || word.charAt(i) == 'e'
                    || word.charAt(i) == 'i'
                    || word.charAt(i) == 'o'
                    || word.charAt(i) == 'u' )
            {
                count++;
            }
            else //else
                {} //nothing
        }
        return count;//return the count
    }

    public static void printOut(int count) //printOut() method
    {
        System.out.println(count);
        // print the count
    }
}

Answer 1

Manually finding the solution is a lot of work. Regular Expression could be a sweet solution to your problem. Have a look at the link below:

How to calculate syllables in text with regex and Java

Also be reminded that the above reference doesnot consider Y as a syllable, you will have to tweak the regular expression a bit to get the desired output. Plus the vowel "e" needs some checking to be done to get the exact results.

Answer 2

I used the word "foo" as input to your program:

Here (around line 112 for me) :

if  (!(word.charAt(word.length()-1) == 'e')){

    if ( word.substring(i,i+3) == "eau")

An example of how the above section of code fails is using the word foo:

The char at word length-1 is not e so therefore this condition above will be evaluated. However, when i is equal to 1 i+3 will equal 4. So, 4 is outside the length of "foo" causing the error.

Keep in mind this is just one example of this type of failure. Make sure that whenever you are getting a substring from i to i+n the string being evaluated has i+n chars left.