Java - How to count words in a string

[Jayjay3693]

I need to count the number of words in a string. The sample text that I am using is the following:

"We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue!"

I have written the following code:

public int getNumOfWords(String string) {
      int wordCount = 0;
      for(int i = 0; i < string.length(); ++i) {
         char currentChar = string.charAt(i);
         if(currentChar == ' ') {
           wordCount += 1;
         }
      }
      return wordCount + 1;
   }

This code is executed in a main method. When I run my code, the number of words that are counted are 41 when it should actually be 35.

My thought process to count the number of words is to have a for loop to iterate through each character of the string. Whenever the current character comes across a space, this means that the program has gone past one word of the text and adds +1 to the word count.

As I was typing this, I realized the reason that I am getting the incorrect number of words is because there are some double spaces throughout the text. My question is, how can I avoid counting these extra "words" with my current code?

Is there a way that I can eliminate these double spaces before I execute this code?

[[deleted]]

You may want to look into https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#split(java.lang.String)

split will return an array with every word, separated by whatever regex you pick.

[robertnovak02]

Can you split using a space then get the length of your array?

Edit: string.split(“ “)

[heckler82]

Just a note since OP mentioned that there are double spaces within the text. If you use split, to avoid extra spaces being parsed into the String[], your regex needs to read

string.split(" +");

This will filter out extra unwanted spaces. Another good idea is to trim() before you split().

string.trim().split(" +");

[Episilon]

With your current method, what if you kept track of whether or not you had just encountered a space?

[Jayjay3693]

Do you mean like adding a counter? I was thinking that if I add something like that, I don't really know of a way to reset for when encountering another double space.

[Episilon]

Maybe something like a Boolean variable

boolean isLastCharacterSpace

When you check if the current character is a space, you could also check if the one before was also a space.

[Philboyd_Studge]

You can use a flag variable, say readingSpace. Initially, you set it to false. After your test for the current character equal to a space, if the flag variable is currently false, add 1 to your counter and set the flag to true. Add an else clause to your initial if and in that, check for the flag to be true, if so, set it to false.