Thread: Counting Vowels and Consonants in a String.

Hello everyone, I am so close to achieving my goal with this program. I just can't seam to figure out where the for loop goes wrong and "mis-counts" the amount of consonants and vowels. Also, in the else...if statement if anyone has advise to make it so it excludes all characters (like !, -, ...etc) besides vowels that would help so much! Part of the consonant problem I believe is it is counting spaces and other characters maybe?
Thanks so much in advance for any help!

import java.lang.String;
 
public class StringProcessor 
{
    String string;
    int vowels;
    int consonants;
 
    public void Count()
    {
        vowels = 0;
        consonants = 0;
        for(int i = 0; i < string.length(); i++)
        {
            char c = string.charAt(i);
            if(c == 'a' || c == 'e' || c == 'i' || c == 'o' || c == 'u')
                vowels++;
            else
                if(c != 'a' || c != 'e' || c != 'i' || c != 'o' || c != 'u' || c != ' ')
                consonants++;               
        }
    }
 
    public void display()
    {
        System.out.println(string + " has " + vowels + " vowels and " 
                + consonants + " consonants.");
    }
 
    public StringProcessor(String aString)
    {
        string = aString;
    }
 
    public void setString(String stString)
    {
        string = stString;
    }
}
 
public class TestProcessor 
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        StringProcessor processor = new StringProcessor("Java Rules");
        processor.Count();
        processor.display();
 
        processor.setString("I like on-line classes");
        processor.Count();
        processor.display();
 
        processor.setString("Spring break was AWESOME!");
        processor.Count();
        processor.display();
    }
}

The output is supposed to look like this:

"Java Rules" has 4 vowels and 5 consonants
"I like on-line classes" has 8 vowels and 10 consonants
"Spring break was AWESOME!" has 8 vowels and 13 consonants

And I get this:

Java Rules has 4 vowels and 6 consonants.
I like on-line classes has 7 vowels and 15 consonants.
Spring break was AWESOME! has 4 vowels and 21 consonants.


Thanks again!

Thanks man, now do you mind me asking, are you saying in my else...if for consonants I should set c == 'b' c == 'c' and so on and so forth for EVERY consonant? Also, how would I go about doing:

"Also, wouldn't it just be easier to have a List (or even a String) that contains all of the vowels, and use that to check?"

You wouldn't mind just providing an example of how you can use a "list" to check if it's a vowel or consonant?

Thanks so much!

Thanks again

I'm afraid I don't understand what happens when I compare c == " ". My guess would be maybe the space would represent any character that is a part of the string?

Also, so if I were to make a list like the following? How would I compare it to the string that were testing from the getString method?

List<String> vowel = new ArrayList<String>();
vowel.add('a');
vowel.add('e');
vowel.add('i');
vowel.add('o');
vowel.add('u');

And thanks so much for your help, I really do appreciate it!!!

Wouldn't it be i <= string.length() in your for loop parameters, as you're not including the last character in your string (if I'm not mistaken)

No, you are mistaken. Strings, like arrays, are zero based. So for a String with a length of 5, characters exist at indicies of 0-4. Length, that is 5, would be invalid.

first of all it s better if you convert all letters to uppercase or to lowcase. This fixes one logic problem. After that erase the second if and replace with something like if(c != ' '). Make conditions for every non-vowel character. I hope this help you

Originally Posted by Junky

No, you are mistaken. Strings, like arrays, are zero based. So for a String with a length of 5, characters exist at indicies of 0-4. Length, that is 5, would be invalid.

Ah yes, thank you for alerting me about that.

the miscount is due to the for loop you need a <= instead of a < otherwise it will stop counting one chracter before the end. I found your program/applet ver useful. Thank you.

Srry fail i just relized why it had to be the other way ... Fail