I'm writing a word-count program

Question

I'm sure this question has come up often but I've searched the web and haven't found a straight-forward answer for my problem. I need to write out a program that simply counts the number of words in a file of text.
This has to be done in two different ways:
1)Using a string object where I input each line.
2)Assuming the string class doesn't exist, and to input the data one character at a time.
Now, I know you won't do the work for me, and I haven't been able to figure out any code to put in yet. I just could use a push in the right direction with this. I haven't been able to find any good examples of this type of programming.

Answer 1

1)Using a string object where I input each line.You could [url http://javaalmanac.com/egs/java.io/ReadLinesFromFile.html]read the text file line by line.
For each line you could [url http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#split(java.lang.String)]split it using [url http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html#sum]the regular expression character for whitespace (zero or more times).
The number elements of the returned array is is the word count for each line.
2)Assuming the string class doesn't exist, and to input the data one character at a time.You could still read the text file in the same way as previously but instead of using the readLine() method
you should use the [url http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/io/BufferedReader.html#read()]read() method.
Each time the returned byte is either ' ', '\t', '\f', '\r' or '\n' (and that the previous byte is not) you could increment the word counter.
Regards