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Don't count spaces when counting words.

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4.86/5 (24 votes)
17 Oct 2011CPOL 78.2K   20   15
Over the last couple of days I've seen numerous examples of people posting about how to count words in a sentence. Disturbingly, these postings recommend suggest counting the number of spaces in the sentence and use that as the basis of a word count.You may be asking why this is a problem. Well,...
Over the last couple of days I've seen numerous examples of people posting about how to count words in a sentence. Disturbingly, these postings recommend suggest counting the number of spaces in the sentence and use that as the basis of a word count.

You may be asking why this is a problem. Well, consider the following sentence:

The total number of words    \t     in this sentence,is 10.


As you can see, simply counting spaces isn't going to work. There's the special characters (the \t) to take care of, the multiple spaces, and the words separated by a comma without a space. So, if counting spaces doesn't work, what does? The answer is to use a regular expression, and you are going to love how simple it is. There's a simple regular expression that matches words, and takes care of all the guff demonstrated above; all you need to match a word is use \w+. Here's a quick sample:

C#
Regex regex = new Regex("\\w+",  RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Multiline | RegexOptions.CultureInvariant);
string input = "The total number of words       \t        this sentence is 10.";
MatchCollection match = regex.Matches(input);

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
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A developer for over 30 years, I've been lucky enough to write articles and applications for Code Project as well as the Intel Ultimate Coder - Going Perceptual challenge. I live in the North East of England with 2 wonderful daughters and a wonderful wife.

I am not the Stig, but I do wish I had Lotus Tuned Suspension.

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionDefinition of word? Pin
Andreas Gieriet12-Mar-12 22:42
professionalAndreas Gieriet12-Mar-12 22:42 
AnswerRe: Definition of word? Pin
User 5924119-Mar-12 15:23
User 5924119-Mar-12 15:23 
GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
Andreas Gieriet19-Mar-12 20:38
professionalAndreas Gieriet19-Mar-12 20:38 
GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
User 5924119-Mar-12 20:50
User 5924119-Mar-12 20:50 
Sure.

How would that cope with something like:

"incidentally , and might I say ( without prejudice )"
Peter Wasser

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa

GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
Andreas Gieriet19-Mar-12 21:31
professionalAndreas Gieriet19-Mar-12 21:31 
GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
User 5924119-Mar-12 22:50
User 5924119-Mar-12 22:50 
GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
Andreas Gieriet20-Mar-12 0:35
professionalAndreas Gieriet20-Mar-12 0:35 
GeneralRe: Definition of word? Pin
Andreas Gieriet20-Mar-12 4:32
professionalAndreas Gieriet20-Mar-12 4:32 
GeneralReason for my vote of 5 Very nice. Pin
ARBebopKid18-Oct-11 5:20
ARBebopKid18-Oct-11 5:20 
General@Pete, Have updated the Regex code part, please take a look ... Pin
zenwalker198517-Oct-11 22:59
zenwalker198517-Oct-11 22:59 
GeneralReason for my vote of 5 I did consider your example in the p... Pin
Eddy Vluggen15-Oct-11 10:41
professionalEddy Vluggen15-Oct-11 10:41 
GeneralExcellent, Pete. I've done something similar in the past, bu... Pin
Dr.Walt Fair, PE22-Aug-11 17:13
professionalDr.Walt Fair, PE22-Aug-11 17:13 
GeneralReason for my vote of 5 nice tip and my learn something new ... Pin
Simon_Whale11-Oct-10 5:50
Simon_Whale11-Oct-10 5:50 
QuestionChance to count the characters in same way?? Pin
Daniel Leykauf28-Sep-11 11:12
Daniel Leykauf28-Sep-11 11:12 
GeneralNice point Pin
r verma19-Mar-10 7:34
r verma19-Mar-10 7:34 

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