How do you write a function that counts the number of characters in a string?

Answer 1

As this is probably a homework question, I will give you some pseudo code:

[code]

num_chars = 0

READ ch FROM string

WHILE ch IS NOT END OF STRING

num_chars = num_chars + 1

READ ch FROM string

END WHILE

[/code]

Remember that in C, we use what are called "C-strings". C-strings are a pointer to a continuous group of characters in memory which are terminated by a null character. The null character is '\0', and has an integer value of 0.

The C-string generally points to the first character in the string. To access the value of this character, you must use the dereferencing operator, *. If you want to move to the next character, you simply add 1 to the pointer.

So if you have a C-string:

char *str = "abcd";

then:

*str '\0'

Anything past the null character is undefined. Trying to access this data is considered to be a buffer overflow, and is very dangerous.

Note that c-strings created as pointers should always be treated as immutable, as trying to change them might produce errors. Many compilers will allocate the above string inside the static data area, along with any constants or literals which can not fit inside the immediate field of an instruction.

If you want a mutable string, then declare it as a character array:

char str[] = "abcd";

This method of declaration will explicitly allocate memory on the stack to store the c string in, and as such, the string can be safely manipulated without fear of unintended side effects.

Answer 2

class Hello{

public static void main(String args[]){

int count = 0;

int fullcount = 0;

String s1;

for (String s1: args) {

for(int charcount=0; count < len(s1); charcount++){

if (s1[charcount] 0) count++; //Take care of case where string is one word

fullcount += count;

System.out.println("argument" + s1 + " has count of" + count);

count = 0;

}

System.out.println("Total count of" + fullcount);

}