Character Occurence

[DMKanz]

I am new to java and I have an assignment that asked me to count the number of character and the number of occurrence. I have figured out the character count be I am not sure how to figure the number of occurrence. Can someone point me in the right direction? Here is my code so far..

Thanks in advance

// Import Java libraries
import java.io.*; // Makes all classes available from the io package
import java.util.*; // Makes all classes available from the util package

//Create class CharacterEntry
public class CharacterEntry
{
	// Main method begins execution of Java application
	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
	{
		// Declare variables
		int characters = 0; 
		int lines = 0;
		String line;
		
		File openFile = new File("File.txt"); // Create file object based on reference to a file
		Scanner readFile = new Scanner(openFile); // Open the file with the scanner

		// Loop through the file
		while (readFile.hasNext())
		{
			line = readFile.nextLine(); // Read the next line
    		lines++; // Count lines
    		
    		// Check for character : omits spaces
    		for (int i = 0; i < line.length(); i++)
    		{
    			if (!Character.isWhitespace(line.charAt(i)))
    			characters++; // Count characters
    		}
		}
    
		// Display character and line count
		System.out.println("Number of characters: " + characters);
		System.out.println("Number of lines: " + lines);
    
		readFile.close(); // Close file stream

		System.exit(0); // Terminate program
	} // End main method
} // End class CharacterEntry

[Junky]

What do you mean by occurrence? Do you mean you want to count how many a's, how many b's etc?

[DMKanz]

Junky - yes I need to count the number of occurrences for each letter

[pbrockway2]

Are you trying to count how many times each character occurs?

In that case you could use a Map<Character,Integer>. The key of a map entry would be the character you found as line.charAt(i) and its value would be the count. Each time you find a character you would increment the count (or, if it there is no map entry for that character yet you would create one with a count of 1).

[Junky]

If a Map is too advanced I have some clues:

Array
System.out.println('z' - 'a');

[DMKanz]

Ok - i am researching. With my current code will i be able to use an array. How do i read the letter into the array?

Thanks in advance

[Junky]

You don't read the letter into the array. You use the array to store the totals for each letter. Total for 'a' goes into index 0, total for 'b' goes into index 1,.... total for 'z' goes into index 25. My hint above should help.

[DMKanz]

Sorry! I am real new to Java - but how does it know it is the letter 'a' or 'b'? - how do i get the character count into the array?

Thank you for your patience

[Junky]

Did you see my hint above? Did you place it in a small test program to see what it does. Here comes the choo-choo train:

class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        char one = 'a';
        char two = 'b';
        char three = 'z';
        int index = one - 'a';
        System.out.println(index);
        index = two - 'a';
        System.out.println(index);
        index = three - 'a';
        System.out.println(index);
    }
}

[DMKanz]

Junky - thank you I figured it out.

I do have one more question is there a way to replace multiple characters without using \\W

String st = str.replaceAll("\\W", "");
String lower = st.toLowerCase()

I would like to replace , : ' ? ; . - with a space

Thanks

[DMKanz]

Final code - any advise would be greatly appreciated

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

 
public class CharacterEntry
{
	public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
	{
		
		
		int characters = 0; 
		String line;
		
		File openFile = new File("File.txt"); 
		Scanner readFile = new Scanner(openFile); 

		
		while (readFile.hasNext())
		{
			line = readFile.nextLine(); 
    		
    		
    		for (int i = 0; i < line.length(); i++)
    		{
    			if (!Character.isWhitespace(line.charAt(i)))
    			characters++; 
    		}
		}
		
		System.out.println("There are " + characters +" characters in the text.");
		readFile.close(); 
		
		FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("File.txt");
		DataInputStream din = new DataInputStream(fis);
		BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(din));
		
		String strLine = "";
		String str = "";
		 
			while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)
			{
				str += strLine;
			}
			
		String st = str.replaceAll("\\W", "");
		String lower = st.toLowerCase();
		
		char[]character = lower.toCharArray();
			Arrays.sort(character);
				for(int counter = 0; counter < character.length; counter++)
				{
					char ch = character[counter];
				
					int count = 0;
						for ( int i = 0; i < character.length; i++)
						{
							if (ch == character[i])
								count++;
						}
 			
						boolean flag = false;
				
						for(int j = counter - 1; j >= 0; j--)
						{
							if(ch == character[j])
								flag=true;
						}
							if(!flag)
							{
								System.out.println("Character " + ch + " appears " + count + " times");
							}
				}
				
				System.exit(0); 
 	}
 }

[Junky]

Do not read the file twice. Doing IO operations are expensive. Read a line once. You can then iterate over it once and do all the necessary checks. Or you can iterate over it as many times as you like (if it is unchanged). Doing multiple loops over the String is better than multiple loops over the file.