Using Ascii Characters instead of Char

Question

So I have a piece of code below that loads in a text file and analyzes it to show the percentages of each letter from a word or sentence that's stored within a text file.

Instead of using char [] letters, I want to be able to use ASCII code instead.

I am unsure how to go about doing this so any help would be appreciated!

This is the code I have so far:

import java.io.File;
    import java.util.Scanner;

    public class testing {
        @SuppressWarnings("resource")
        public static void main(String[] args){ 
            Scanner scan;
                    try {
                        scan = new Scanner(new File("G:/test.txt")); //change directory to load in text file
                            } 
                        catch (Exception e) {
                            System.out.println("File was not found ");
                                return;
                  }
                  int[] count = new int[26];
                    int total = 0;
                        while(scan.hasNextLine()) {
                            String text2 = scan.nextLine();
                                System.out.println ("\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
                                System.out.println ("                            Words loaded in from the file: " + text2);
                                System.out.println ("--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
                                System.out.print("\n");
                                System.out.print("");
                    char[] letters = text2.toCharArray();
                            char[] letters1 = { 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n','o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z' };
                                for(int i = 0; i < letters.length; i++) {
                                    for(int j = 0; j < 26; j++) {
                                if(letters[i] == letters1[j]) {
                          count[j]++;
                          total = total + 1;
                          break;
                        }
                      }
                    }
                                for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++){
                      System.out.format("|    "+ letters1[i]+"    ");
                  }
                    System.out.println ("\n----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
                  for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++){
                    float percentage = 0; 
                    if (count[i] > 0)
                        percentage = ((float) count[i]/total)*100;
                      System.out.format("|  "+percentage+ "%%   ");
                      }
                        }
            }
        }

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16458564/convert-string-to-ascii-value-in-java — mattm, Mar 27 '15 at 14:49

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '15 at 14:32

A char in Java is just an unsigned 16 bits integer containing the Unicode codepoint associated with that character (at least if it is in the BMP). And Unicode is a superset of ASCII, so your char[] already contain the ASCII values of the characters you're processing.

Robert · Answer 2 · 2015-03-27T14:54:21.687

A char can be converted to int (0-127) (see here), so its really easy to save it in an array. You just have to edit the parts of your code where you work with the latin alphabet and substitute it with a bigger array.

This should work:

int[] count = new int[128];
int total = 0;
while (scan.hasNextLine()) {
    String text2 = scan.nextLine();
    System.out.println ("\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
    System.out.println ("                            Words loaded in from the file: " + text2);
    System.out.println ("--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
    System.out.print("\n");
    System.out.print("");
    char[] letters = text2.toCharArray();
    for (int i = 0; i < letters.length; i++) {
            count[letters[i]]++;
            total++;
    }
    System.out.println("\n----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------");
    for (int i = 0; i < letters.length; i++) {
        float percentage = 0;
        if (count[1] > 0)
            percentage = ((float) count[i] / total) * 100;
        System.out.format("|  " + percentage + "%%   ");
    }
}

I dont know what the following part should do, so I skipped it:

 for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++){
                      System.out.format("|    "+ letters1[i]+"    ");
}

Using Ascii Characters instead of Char

2 Answers2