Sorting words in order of frequency? (least to greatest)

Question

does any one have any idea how to sort a list of words in the order of their frequency (least to greatest) using the built in collection.sort and a compar

Answer 1

A solution, close to your original posting with corrections and the sorting as suggested by Torious in the comments:

import java.util.*;

public class Parser implements Comparator  {

    public Map wordCount;

    void parse ()
    {
        Scanner scanner = new Scanner (System.in);

        // don't redeclare it here - your attribute wordCount will else be shadowed
        wordCount = new HashMap ();

        //iterates through each word in the text file
        while (scanner.hasNext ()) {
            String word = scanner.next ();
            // operate on the word, not on next and next of next word from Scanner
            word = word.replaceAll (" [^A-Za-z0-9]", " ");
            word = word.toLowerCase ();
            // look into your map:
            if (! wordCount.containsKey (word))
                wordCount.put (word, 1);
            else
                wordCount.put (word, wordCount.get (word) + 1);;
        }
    }

    public int getCount (String word) {
        return wordCount.get (word);
    }

    public int compare (String w1, String w2) {
        return getCount (w1) - getCount (w2);
    }

    public List getWordsInOrderOfFrequency () {
        List justWords = new ArrayList (wordCount.keySet());
        Collections.sort (justWords, this);
        return justWords; 
    }

    public static void main (String args []) {
        Parser p = new Parser ();
        p.parse ();
        List ls = p.getWordsInOrderOfFrequency ();
        for (String s: ls) 
            System.out.println (s);
    }
}