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Mr_Fishy52
Mr_Fishy52

Reputation: 99

Counting punctuation marks in a text file using ArrayList and loops arent working properly, how to fix?

SOLVED.

I am trying to count how many punctuation marks there are in a text file. I'm using if statements to count the number of each punctuation mark and doesn't seem to be working, it says every element is a full stop.

this is my loop

    for (int c = 0; c <= punk1.size()-1; c++) {
        if (punk1.get(c).matches(".")) {
            fullstop += 1;
        } else if (punk1.get(c).matches(",")) {
            comma += 1;
        } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("?")) {
            qmark += 1;
        } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("!")) {
            expoint += 1;
        } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("\"")) {
            doublequote += 1;
        } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("\'")){
            singlequote += 1;
        } else {
            System.out.println("Punctuation Marks not Found");
        }
    }

and this is the output.

Punctuation marks in text file: [., ., ., ,, ,, ,, !, !, !, ?, ?, ?, ", ",", ', ', ']
Number of Punctuation marks in file: 18
Number of fullstops: 18
Number of commass: 0 
Number of question marks: 0 
Number of exclamation point: 0 
Number of double quotes: 0 
Number of singlequotes: 0

there should be 3 for each.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1195

Answers (3)

Maverick
Maverick

Reputation: 1599

When you use matches keyword with the regex expression, you should be careful with the regex expression.

You have to escape . ? " and ' with backslash.

Try the following code:

for (int c = 0; c <= punk1.size()-1; c++) {
    if (punk1.get(c).matches("\\.")) {
        fullstop += 1;
    } else if (punk1.get(c).matches(",")) {
        comma += 1;
    } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("\\?")) {
        qmark += 1;
    } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("!")) {
        expoint += 1;
    } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("\"")) {
        doublequote += 1;
    } else if (punk1.get(c).matches("\'")){
        singlequote += 1;
    } else {
        System.out.println("Punctuation Marks not Found");
    }
}

Alternatively, You can also use equals for comparison.

Upvotes: 1

npinti
npinti

Reputation: 52185

The .matches method takes a regular expression as parameter. The problem, in your case, is that the period character is a special character in regular expression syntax, which means match any character, thus, your first if statement will always hold true.

To fix this, you can simply replace punk1.get(c).matches(".") with punk1.get(c).matches("\\."). This will escape the period character so that it will be matched literally.

Alternatively, you can use the contains method which will take the strings as they are.

Upvotes: 3

Dakshinamurthy Karra
Dakshinamurthy Karra

Reputation: 5463

You are using matches which uses a regex match. Since '.' matches any character the first if condition is always true.

Upvotes: 4

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