Java Program to Count Number of Words in a String

This article is created to cover a program in Java to count the total number of words available in a string entered by user.

Count Words in String - Basic Version

The question is, write a Java program to count the number of words in a string. The string must be entered by user at run-time of the program. The program given below is the answer:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class CodesCracker
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      String str;
      int totalWords;
      Scanner s = new Scanner(System.in);
      
      System.out.print("Enter the String: ");
      str = s.nextLine();
      
      String words[] = str.split(" ");
      totalWords = words.length;
      System.out.println("\nTotal Number of Words = " +totalWords);
   }
}

Here is its sample run with user input, Welcome to Java as string to count total words available in it:

java count number of words in string

In above program, the following statement:

String words[] = str.split(" ");

is used to split the string str by white spaces. That above statement can also be replaced with the statement given below:

String words[] = str.split("\\s");

Count Words in String - Complete Version

The problem with previous program is, what if user enters a string in which there is/are single or multiple words separated with more than one white spaces. Therefore, in that case, we need to replace the above statement with:

String words[] = str.split("\\s+");

Here is the complete version of the program:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class CodesCracker
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      Scanner s = new Scanner(System.in);
      
      System.out.print("Enter the String: ");
      String str = s.nextLine();
      
      String words[] = str.split("\\s+");
      System.out.println("\nTotal Number of Words = " +words.length);
   }
}

The snapshot given below shows the sample run with a string input that contains some words separated with multiple white spaces:

java count words in string

The same job of counting total number of words in a given string, can also be done using the following program:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class CodesCracker
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      String str;
      int i, strLen, count=1;
      Scanner s = new Scanner(System.in);
      
      System.out.print("Enter the String: ");
      str = s.nextLine();
      
      strLen = str.length();
      for(i=0; i<=(strLen-1); i++)
      {
         if(str.charAt(i) == ' ' && str.charAt(i+1)!=' ')
            count++;
      }
      
      System.out.println("\nTotal Number of Words = " +count);
   }
}

You'll get the same output as of previous program.

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