Basic program for a learning programmer

Question

So I just started taking my first classing in programming with Java, so don't hurt me for being a new guy. I understand this may be a simple thing to do, but I'm stuck on where to even begin. I want to make a program that simply counts the number of characters in a string using the Scanner utility. So far I have...

import java.util.scanner
class Counter
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
      System.out.println("Type a sentence, and I will tell you how many 
        characters are in it.");
      String sentence = input.nextString();

And this is as far as I have gotten. What I want to do is the previous plus...

Char character;

and do something with that, maybe a for-loop, but I'm simply stumped. And even if I did want to do this I wouldn't know how to go about it. Any ideas?

Thanks! ~Andrew

EDIT:

import java.util.Scanner;  
class Counter
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
      System.out.println("Type a sentence, and I will tell you how many 
        characters are in it.");
      String sentence = input.nextLine();
      sentence = sentence.trim();
      System.out.print("This sentence has " + sentence.length() + "    
         characters in it.");
   }
}

Did not seem to work.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 06 '15 at 03:23

You have to use input.nextLine() instead of input.nextString() to capture the sentence given by the user.
You also have to use the trim() method on that sentence to delete the spaces given by the user in the front and back side of the sentence. Ex: sentence.trim()
You can get the length of the sentence by the length() method. Ex: sentence.length()

Now, I am giving you the full code to count letters of a given sentence:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class LetterCount 
{
    public static void main(String[] args) 
    {
        Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.println("Type a sentence, and I will tell you how many characters are in it.");
        String sentence = input.nextLine();
        System.out.print("This sentence has " + sentence.trim().length() + " characters in it.");       
    }
}

score -1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '15 at 00:56

-1

First of all, to read by Scanner you have to use input.nextLine(); instead of input.nextString();.

After, you can use .length() function to know how much positions have your String (how much chars have your String) so you won't have to convert it to any char or whatever.

System.out.println(sentence.length());

I expect it will be helpful for you!

answered Sep 06 '15 at 00:56

Francisco Romero

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Adding this worked fine. but is there any way I can exclude blank spaces and symbols? – Andrew M Sep 06 '15 at 01:03
@AndrewM to exclude blank spaces you can use `.trim()` function of the class `String`: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#trim(). About symbols I'm not secure but I guess that you could do that with a regex. – Francisco Romero Sep 06 '15 at 01:06
@AndrewM Let me know if you have doubts about how to use `.trim()` function. – Francisco Romero Sep 06 '15 at 01:09
So what I did was i made... sentence = sentence.trim(); and then displayed the .length() you told me about before, but white space still shows in the number. how do you apply .trim() to a String? – Andrew M Sep 06 '15 at 01:11
@AndrewM Can you edit your question with the code that you have tried please? – Francisco Romero Sep 06 '15 at 01:15
@AndrewM Sorry I said it wrong to you. `.trim()` function let you to remove the first blank space (if it exist) For example if you have " hello" it will be "hello". You can do `sentence.replaceAll("\\s","")`. Now it will work. I check it on my Eclipse now. – Francisco Romero Sep 06 '15 at 01:21
That fixed it! Thanks a ton. – Andrew M Sep 06 '15 at 01:24
@AndrewM You are welcome :) – Francisco Romero Sep 06 '15 at 01:25
Someone can explain me why the downvote is? – Francisco Romero Sep 11 '15 at 09:51

Basic program for a learning programmer

2 Answers2