Count words in a text box

[andrew104]

I have to count specific letters entered in a text box (which I've completeed, as well as count the total number of words. I am going to call anything with a space before and after it a word. I'm not really sure what to do for this. If someone has an idea it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Here is my code to count a character...

    ' Count the number of times that character a is used in the string InputText
    Function strCountA1(ByVal InputText As String, ByVal a As Char) As Integer
        Dim i As Integer
        For i = 0 To InputText.Length - 1
            If InputText.Substring(i, 1) = a Then
                strCountA1 = strCountA1 + 1
            End If
        Next
    End Function

[Edneeis]

Private Function GetWordCount(ByVal ctrl As Control) As Short
        Dim words() As String = ctrl.Text.Split(" ")
        Return words.Length
    End Function
 
'syntax of use
'MsgBox(GetWordCount(RichTextBox1))

[andrew104]

Thank you. How would I display this value in a label in real-time mode then? Thanks,

Andrew

[wyrd]

I replied to this on the other forum you posted to as well, but just incase here it is on this forum as well...

Regular expressions are the easiest and best way if you want an accurate count of words in a String..

Dim r As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("\w+")
WordCountLabel.Text = r.Matches(InputText).Count

You can easily count how many times a is in a String as well...

Dim r As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("[a]{1}")
strCountA1 = r.Matches(InputText).Count

[andrew104]

Thanks, that worked good. How should I count the total characters in the text box? I can't seem to get anything to work very well. The code that I posted above doesn't work at all. I need to count the total of letters typed in the alphabet (A-Z). Any ideas?

ALSO - I need to count the instances of "st" in the text box. The code that I'm using now does work, but if "s" is not the last character in the text box, then it displays "0" instead of the total. How can I fix this? Thanks much.

My "st" counting code:

    ' Count the number of times that characters st are used in the string InputText
    Function CountSTTotal(ByVal InputText As String, ByVal t As Char) As Integer
        Dim i As Integer
        If InputText.EndsWith("s") Or InputText.EndsWith("S") Then
            For i = 0 To InputText.Length - 1
                If InputText.Substring(i, 1) = t Then
                    CountSTTotal = CountSTTotal + 1
                End If
            Next
        End If
    End Function
        Me.STCountLabel.Text = CountSTTotal(InputTextBox.Text, "t")

[wyrd]

You asked these same questions about 2 weeks ago..
http://www.dotnetforums.net/showthre...hlight=regular

Scroll down to the bottom for my reply.

[andrew104]

Thanks for the reply. I am confused, but will try it and let you know how it works. Andrew

[doro40282]

I am writing a program as well that counts the words in a text box the way I would like to do it is to count the spaces. What would the code look like if I wanted to count them I used some code using a split function and It counted every space so even if there was a double space it would count two words when and make the end number false. I dont know what to write for the code.

[tgkprog]

' returns word count
' correction for double/triple/ multiple spaces
' input is the string
Public Function wordCount(rawS As String) As Long
Dim spcSpltsA() As String
Dim wrdCntI As Long
Dim i As Integer
spcSpltsA = Split(rawS, " ")
wrdCntI = UBound(spcSpltsA)
 
' if empty string in array than reduce count - indicates extra space
For i = 1 To UBound(spcSpltsA)
    If spcSpltsA(i) = "" Then
        wrdCntI = wrdCntI - 1
    End If
Next
wordCount = wrdCntI
End Function

[doro40282]

any ideas on a sentence count or paragraph count?

[Mike Hildner]

I don't want this to sound rude, but think about it. What's the definition of a sentence? What's the definition of a paragraph?

You already have examples of code that works. You should be able to adapt that.

[doro40282]

sorry im just new to programming and I find it confusing, this is my first program

[Mike Hildner]

Fair enough. So you need to count sentences, I guess a sentence would end with a period or a question mark. I like Edneeis' idea of using the split function. You might run into trouble if there was an ellipses (...) in the text, but you usually get an approximate count anyway.

You could probably use the same split idea for carriage return/line feed (vbCrLf or hex 0d0a)

There, too you might run into troubles - maybe they hit enter twice between paragraphs, maybe just once. But I bet you could code to check for both.

Alternatively, you could just loop through all of the text and incriment a variable when you hit a period, another variable when you hit a carriage return (hex 0d or Chr(13))

[Edneeis]

On second thought I agree with wyrd and would say go for regular expressions. I don't know how to get a paragraph though, but here is a sentence and word. The following code assumes an Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Dim sentencePattern As String = "\b(\.$|\. |\.\n|\.\r|\?$|\? |\?\n|\?\r|!$|! |!\n|!\r)"
        Dim wordPattern As String = ("\w+")
        MsgBox("Sentence Count: " & Regex.Matches(TextBox1.Text, sentencePattern).Count)
        MsgBox("Word Count: " & Regex.Matches(TextBox1.Text, wordpattern).Count)

[tgkprog]

regex is nice - if i can get it to work - basic help needed/ what object do i refer to to get the regex library

i tried the code in VBscript theu a html page:

<script type="text/vbscript">
 
 
Function RegExpCnt(str1)
 
    Dim regEx, Match, Matches       ' Create variable.
    Set regEx = New RegExp
 
 
    Dim sentencePattern
    sentencePattern = "\b(\.$|\. |\.\n|\.\r|\?$|\? |\?\n|\?\r|!$|! |!\n|!\r)"
    Dim wordPattern
    wordPattern = "\w+"
    MsgBox(str1)
    MsgBox("Sentence Count: " & Regex.Matches(str1, sentencePattern).Count)
    MsgBox("Word Count: " & Regex.Matches(str1, wordpattern).Count)
End Function
 
 
RegExpCnt ("hello   how are u ? today ! m  k")
 
</script>

but it does not work

[Edneeis]

You would use the imports I mentioned. Although it wont match that string because there are spaces before the punctuation which isn't really vaild for a sentence. It checks the end of words for the punctuation then a space or new line.

[doro40282]

i still cant get the regex way of counting senteces to work. I have been trying to do it with a for loop but i cant get it to work this is what i have.

Private Sub Button5_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button5.Click
Dim sentence As String
Dim i As String
i = TextBox2.Text

For i = 0 To TextBox2.Text.Length

If TextBox2.Text.Substring(i, 1) = "." Then
sentence = sentence + 1
If i = "?" Then sentence = sentence + 1
If i = "!" Then sentence = sentence + 1

End If


Next
TextBox4.Text = sentence
End Sub


I want to click a button and have the number of sentences in a textbox.

[doro40282]

I got the sentence count to work but and almost have my paragraph count working the only fault in it is that if i have 3 paragraphs it only counts 2 should I automatically add 1 to the paragraph variable at the end or should I add some other line of code here is what I have so far.

Dim sr As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText(filename)
Dim theline As String
TextBox2.Clear()
TextBox2.Multiline = True
Do While sr.Peek <> -1

theline = sr.ReadLine
If theline.Length = 0 Then
paragraph = paragraph + 1
End If
TextBox2.Text = TextBox2.Text + theline + vbCrLf
Loop
sr.Close()
TextBox1.Text = filename
End Sub

Any one have any suggestions

[doro40282]

I added 1 to the paragraph counter before I displayed the count of the paragraphs and it seemed to work until I put a cariage return or two at the end of the text file that I open in the text file.