Help with program using hashtable to count words & other chars in txt file

Question

I need to use only a hashtable to count the occurences words and chars in a text file and display them alphabetically. I am not to use anything but the hashtable. so far, I can get it to count only the words in the file and not the chars, I want to know how to make it count the chars (,.;:?(){}[]!@#$%^&\t\"<>/`~ ) that may be found and if it is possible to get it to display them in a sorted (alphabetical) order w/o using anything else.
This is what I have: mport java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
class words{
String word;
int count;
public class WordCount{
static Hashtable h=new Hashtable();
static words w;
static void countWords(String s){
if((w=(words)h.get((java.lang.Object)s))==null){
w=new words();
w.word=s;
w.count=1;
h.put(s,w);
}else{
w.count++;
h.remove(s);
h.put(s,w);
public static void main(String args[]){
String s;
StringTokenizer st;
String t;
String fn = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter the filename:");
BufferedReader br = null;
try{
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fn));
s=br.readLine();
while(s!=null){
st= new StringTokenizer(s, " ,.;:?(){}[]!@#$%^&\t\"<>/`~  ");
// Split your words.
while(st.hasMoreTokens()){
t=st.nextToken();
countWords(t);
s=br.readLine();
}catch(Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
Enumeration e=h.elements();
w=(words)e.nextElement();
while(e.hasMoreElements()){
System.out.println(w.word + " " + w.count);
w=(words)e.nextElement();
System.exit(0);
}

Answer 1

Please don't crosspost. It cuts down on the effectiveness of responses, leads to people wasting their time answering what others have already answered, makes for difficult discussion, and is generally just annoying and bad form.