c++ count words in array - c++

Question

I need to write a function that gets a string and count how many words there are in the string and how many letters. And then calculate the average of it.
A word in a string is a sequence of letters and numbers separated by one or more spaces.
First of all I have to check if the string is correct. The string must contain only lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and numbers only.
i didnt menage to count all sort of words correctly and also my function doesnt count the last letter.
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
#include <string.h>
#define SIZE 50
float checkString(char string[]) {
float wordCounter = 0;
float letterCounter = 0;
bool isLegit = true;
int i = 0;
while (isLegit) {
if (((string[i] >= 48 && string[i] <= 57) ||
(string[i] >= 65 && string[i] <= 90) ||
(string[i] >= 97 && string[i] <= 122 ))) {
for (int j = 0; j <= strlen(string); j++) {
if ((string[j - 1] != ' ' && string[j] == ' ' &&
string[i + 1] != ' ')
|| j == (strlen(string) - 1)) {
wordCounter++;
}
else if (string[j] != ' ') {
letterCounter++;
cout << string[j];
}
}
cout << " The avareage is : " << (letterCounter /
wordCounter) << endl;
isLegit = false;
}
else {
return -1;
isLegit = false;
}
}
cout << "Number of words " << wordCounter << endl;
cout << "Number of letters " <<letterCounter << endl;
}
int main() {
char string[SIZE];
cout << "please enter a sentence " << endl;
cin.getline(string, SIZE);
checkString(string);
}

Answer 1

Instead of using char[] for strings, I suggest that you use std::string which can grow and shrink dynamically. It's one of the most common types to use in the standard C++ library. You can also make use of stringstreams which lets you put a string inside it and then you can extract the contents of the stringstream using >>, just like when reading from std::cin.
Example with comments in the code:
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream> // std::stringstream
#include <string> // std::string
// use std::string instead of a char[]
float checkString(const std::string& string) {
// put the string in a stringstream to extract word-by-word
std::istringstream is(string);
unsigned words = 0;
unsigned letters = 0;
std::string word;
// extract one word at a time from the stringstream:
while(is >> word) {
// erase invalid characters:
for(auto it = word.begin(); it != word.end();) {
// Don't use magic numbers. Put the character literals in the code so
// everyone can see what you mean
if((*it>='0' && *it<='9')||(*it>='A' && *it<='Z')||(*it>='a' && *it<='z')) {
// it was a valid char
++it;
} else {
// it was an invalid char, erase it
it = word.erase(it);
}
}
// if the word still has some characters in it, make it count:
if(word.size()) {
++words;
letters += word.size();
std::cout << '\'' << word << "'\n"; // for debugging
}
}
std::cout << "Number of words " << words << "\n";
std::cout << "Number of letters " << letters << "\n";
std::cout << "The average number of letters per word is "
<< static_cast<float>(letters) / words << '\n';
return 0.f; // not sure what you are supposed to return, but since the function
// signature says that you should return a float, you must return a float.
}
int main() {
checkString(" Hello !!! World, now let's see if it works. ");
}

Answer 2

I would like to add an additional answer. This answer is based on "more-modern" C++ and the usage of algorithms. You want to solve 3 tasks:
Check, if string is OK and matched to your expectations
Count the number of words in the given string
Count the number of letters
Calculate the ratio of words/letters
For all this you may use existings algorithms from the C++ standard library. In the attached example code, you will see a one-liner for each task.
The statements are somehow very simple, so that I will not explain much more. If there should be a question, I am happy to answer.
Please see here one possible example code:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <iterator>
#include <regex>
#include <algorithm>
#include <tuple>
#include <cctype>
std::regex re("\\w+");
std::tuple<bool, int, int, double> checkString(const std::string& str) {
// Check if string consists only of allowed values, spaces or alpha numerical
bool stringOK{ std::all_of(str.begin(), str.end(), [](const char c) { return std::isalnum(c) || std::isspace(c); }) };
// Count the number of words
int numberOfWords{ std::distance(std::sregex_token_iterator(str.begin(),str.end(), re, 1), {}) };
// Count the number of letters
int numberOfLetters{ std::count_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isalnum) };
// Return all calculated values
return std::make_tuple(stringOK, numberOfWords, numberOfLetters, static_cast<double>(numberOfWords)/ numberOfLetters);
}
int main() {
// Ask user to input string
std::cout << "Please enter a sentence:\n";
// Get string from user
if (std::string str{}; std::getline(std::cin, str)) {
// Analyze string
auto [stringOk, numberOfWords, numberOfLetters, ratio] = checkString(str);
// SHow result
std::cout << "\nString content check: " << (stringOk ? "OK" : "NOK") << "\nNumber of words: "
<< numberOfWords << "\nNumber of letters: " << numberOfLetters << "\nRatio: " << ratio << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
Of course there are many more other possible solutions. But, because of the simplicity of this solution, I showed this variant.