Exercise - Count Words

Problem
Write a method which counts the number of words in a string. Assume that a word is defined as a sequence of letters.

Signature
public static int countWords(String s)
Note: This is declared static because it is doesn't depend on instance variables from the class it is defined in. It's declared publiconly because it might be generally useful.

Example
Call
countWords("Hello") countWords("Hello world") countWords("Hello, world.") countWords("Don't worry?") countWords("Easy as 123, . . .")

Returns 1 2 2 3 2 One word. Two words.

Comments

Still two words. Three words because of the single quote. Two words.

Hints
One way to solve this is to go down the string one character at a time. Use a boolean variable to indicate whether you're in a word or not. When the variable indicates that you're in a word, you can ignore alphabetic characters (tested with Character.isLetter()). If an alphabetic character is encountered when you're outside a word, then you should increase the word count and switch the state of the boolean variable.

Extensions
A better definition of "word" would make this better. For example, non-alphabetics between words should only count if they include at least one blank so that contractions like "don't" aren't counted as two words.