Count number of words in a string

In this post, we will see how to find number of words in a String.

Problem

Find the number of words in a String.

For example:
There are 6 words in below String

Algorithm

The algorithm will be very simple.

• Initialize count with 1 as if there are no spaces in the string, then there will be one word in the String.
• Check if you encounter any space.
• Once you find the space, check it next character. If it is not space then we found a word in the String.Increment the count variable.
• Once you reach end of String, count variable will hold number of words in the String.

Program

package org.arpit.java2blog.java8;

public class CountNumberOfWordsInStringMain {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "welcome to java   tutorial on Java2blog";

        int count = 1;

        for (int i = 0; i < str.length() - 1; i++)
        {
            if ((str.charAt(i) == ' ') && (str.charAt(i + 1) != ' '))
            {
                count++;
            }
        }
        System.out.println("Number of words in a string : " + count);
    }
}

When you run above program, you will get below output:

that’s all about how to count number of words in a string.