Android - java - count words

Question

I have an edittext and I want to count the words in it. There is something wrong when there are new lines in the edittext.

I tried this:

String[] WC = et_note.getText().toString().split(" ");
Log.i("wordcount", "wc: " + WC.length);

This is a text -> wc: 4

This is

a

text -> wc: 4

This is

a simple

text -> wc: 4

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You want to split on arbitrary strings of whitespace, rather than just space characters. So, use .split("\\s+") instead of .split(" ").

Answer 2

This would work even with multiple spaces and leading and/or trailing spaces and blank lines:

String words = str.trim();
if (words.isEmpty())
return 0;
return words.split("\\s+").length; // separate string around spaces  

You could also use \\W here instead of \\s, if you could have something other than space separating words.

Answer 3

I'd suggest to use BreakIterator. According to my experience this is the best way to cover not standard languages like Japanese where there aren't spaces that separates words.

Example of word counting here.