How do I count the number of words in a string?

Question

I need to count the number of words and I am assuming the correct way to do it is by calculating the number of times that the previous character in a string is not a letter

Answer 1

This problem is slightly more complicated than your algorithm allows.

• What if there are two or more spaces in a row?
• What if the string starts or ends with whitespace (or non-word characters)?

This looks like homework, so I don't want to provide any code. I suggest an alternative approach which is simpler to think about.

• Walk through the characters in the string, one by one.
• Do something to remember if you are currently scanning a word or if you are not currently scanning a word.
• Do something to determine when you enter or leave a word, and increment your counter accordingly.