Trying to write code that calculates the average length of words in a sentence

Question

The code needs to have a method averageLength with the parameter String s. The method needs to return, as a double value, the average length of the words in s. Assuming s consists of only words separated by single blanks, without any leading or trailing blanks. I have a code below that finds the average length of words but it doesn't have the method averageLength:

import java.util.Scanner;

class main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);

        System.out.println("Please type in your sentence, then press enter: ");

        String words = sc.nextLine();

        int count = 0;
        double sum = 0;
        double average = 0;

        sc = new Scanner(words);

        while (sc.hasNext()) {

            String userInput = sc.next();

            double charNum = userInput.length();
            sum = charNum + sum;
            count++;

            if (count > 0) {
                average = sum / count;
            }
        }
        System.out.println("Average word length = " + average);
    }
}

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '21 at 20:31

First, declare a method that returns a double and accepts a parameter of String

  private static double returnAverageLength(String sentence){

With the help of the split() method, we split the sentence into words

  String [] words = sentence.split(" ");

With a for loop we count all characters of the sentence

for(int i=0;i<words.length;i++){
            countCharacters+= words[i].length();
        }

And we return the average result

return countCharacters / words.length;

Full code

public static void main(String[] args) {

        Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);

       System.out.println("Write sentence");
       String s = scanner.nextLine();

       double average = returnAverageLength(s);

        System.out.println("AVERAGE IS " + average);

    }

    private static double returnAverageLength(String sentence){

        String [] words = sentence.split(" ");

        double countCharacters = 0;

        for(int i=0;i<words.length;i++){
            countCharacters+= words[i].length();
        }



        return countCharacters / words.length;
    }

    
}

OUTPUT

Write sentence
Hello From Stackoverflow
AVERAGE IS 7.33

score 0 · Answer 2 · 2021-03-15T17:18:48.587

Since Java 8 you can use DoubleStream#average method for this purpose:

public static double averageLength(String words) {
    return Arrays
            // split a string into an array of
            // words by spaces, returns Stream<String>
            .stream(words.split(" "))
            // take a word's length, returns DoubleStream
            .mapToDouble(String::length)
            // returns OptionalDouble
            .average()
            // if a value is not present, returns 0.0
            .orElse(0.0D);
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String words = "Not all questions benefit from including code " +
            "but if your problem is with code you've written you " +
            "should include some But don't just copy in your entire " +
            "program Not only is this likely to get you in trouble " +
            "if you're posting your employer's code it likely includes " +
            "a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to " +
            "ignore when trying to reproduce the problem";

    System.out.println(averageLength(words)); // 4.671875
}

^{See also: Sort semantic versions in a given array as a string}

Trying to write code that calculates the average length of words in a sentence

2 Answers2