Counting characters, words, length of the words and total length in a sentence

Question

I have to write a script that takes a sentence and prints the word count, character count (excluding the spaces), length of each word and the length. I know that there exist wc -m to counter number of characters in the word, but how to make use of it in script?

#!/bin/bash

mystring="one two three test five"
maxlen=0;
for token in $mystring; do
  echo -n "$token: ";
  echo -n $token | wc -m;
    if [ ${#token} -gt $maxlen ]; then 
      maxlen=${#token}; fi;
done

echo "--------------------------";
echo -n "Total words: ";
echo "$mystring" | wc -w;
echo -n "Total chars: ";
echo "$mystring" | wc -m;
echo -n "Max length: "; 
echo $maxlen

Sounds like [tag:homework]. If it is, please tag it as such. For many of us, if we see that tag, we'll make a greater effort to help you learn why the answer is what it is, rather than just providing a solution. — ghoti, Jan 05 '12 at 02:56
thank you, ghoti, will mention further. But i am just practising with scripts and shell commands — mydreamadsl, Jan 05 '12 at 02:59
The one liner for the CLI: `echo 'Here is my test String' | wc -m` — yurisich, Feb 13 '14 at 15:35

jcomeau_ictx · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-05T02:50:27.430

12

riffing on Jaypal Singh's answer:

jcomeau@intrepid:~$ mystring="one two three four five"
jcomeau@intrepid:~$ echo "string length: ${#mystring}"
string length: 23
jcomeau@intrepid:~$ echo -n "lengths of words: "; i=0; for token in $mystring; do echo -n "${#token} "; i=$((i+1)); done; echo; echo "word count: $i"
lengths of words: 3 3 5 4 4 
word count: 5
jcomeau@intrepid:~$ echo -n "maximum string length: "; maxlen=0; for token in $mystring; do if [ ${#token} -gt $maxlen ]; then maxlen=${#token}; fi; done; echo $maxlen
maximum string length: 5

edited Jan 05 '12 at 02:50

answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:40

jcomeau_ictx

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thanks for your answer, how can i output only maximum length? – mydreamadsl Jan 05 '12 at 02:45
what do you mean by "maximum length"? – jcomeau_ictx Jan 05 '12 at 02:46
like token "three" is the largest word in the string, and it's length is 5 – mydreamadsl Jan 05 '12 at 02:47
Sorry buddy out for dinner but looks like you are all set! ;) Good luck!! – jaypal singh Jan 05 '12 at 04:15

Adam Dymitruk · Answer 2 · 2012-01-05T02:35:13.353

10

echo $mystring | wc -w

or

echo $mystring | wc --words

will do a word count for you.

You can pipe each word to wc:

echo $token | wc -m

to store the result in a variable:

mycount=`echo $token | wc -m`
echo $mycount

to add to the total as you go word by word, do math with this syntax:

total=0
#start of your loop
total=$((total+mycount))
#end of your loop
echo $total

edited Jan 05 '12 at 02:35

answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:24

Adam Dymitruk

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score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:28

4

#!/bin/bash

mystring="one two three test five"
for token in $mystring; do
  echo -n "$token: ";
  echo -n $token | wc -m;
done
echo "--------------------------";
echo -n "Total words: ";
echo "$mystring" | wc -w;
echo -n "Total chars: ";
echo "$mystring" | wc -m;

answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:28

Eugen Rieck

64,175
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Wow, cool, thanks!) how can i check maximum length of the word in whole string? – mydreamadsl Jan 05 '12 at 02:38

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 29 '12 at 23:01

4

string="i am a string"

n=$(echo $string | wc -w )

echo $n

4

The value of n can be used as an integer in expressions

eg.

echo $((n+1))
5

edited Aug 29 '12 at 23:01

Aaron

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answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:33

daya

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would you please make this as one-liner too – Indrajeet Gour May 11 '18 at 18:19

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 05 '12 at 02:25

You are very close. In bash you can use # to get the length of your variable.

Also, if you want to use bash interpreter use bash instead of sh and the first line goes like this -

#!/bin/bash

Use this script -

#!/bin/bash

mystring="one two three test five"
for token in $mystring
do
    if [ $token = "one" ]
    then
        echo ${#token}
    elif [ $token = "two" ]
    then
        echo ${#token}
    elif [ $token = "three" ]
    then
        echo ${#token}
    elif [ $token = "test" ]
    then
        echo ${#token}
    elif [ $token = "five" ]
    then
        echo ${#token}
    fi
done

There are a couple ways to do arithmetic in the shell. I like `foo=$((bar + 1))` — Matt K, Jan 05 '12 at 02:29

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 26 '15 at 13:56

0

code

var=(one two three)
length=${#var[@]}
echo $length

output

answered Jun 26 '15 at 13:56

Alan

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2

A brief explanation would improve this answer. – Jun 27 '15 at 02:12
2

I'll soon explain it. First I need to remove my appendix (seriously). – Alan Jun 28 '15 at 17:26

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 05 '12 at 03:35

The wc command is a good bet.

$ echo "one two three four five" | wc
       1       5      24

where the result is number of lines, words and characters. In a script:

#!/bin/sh

mystring="one two three four five"

read lines words chars <<< `wc <<< $mystring`

echo "lines: $lines"
echo "words: $words"
echo "chars: $chars"

echo -n "word lengths:"
declare -i nonspace=0
declare -i longest=0
for word in $mystring; do
  echo -n " ${#word}"
  nonspace+=${#word}"
  if [[ ${#word} -gt $longest ]]; then
    longest=${#word}
  fi
done
echo ""
echo "nonspace chars: $nonspace"
echo "longest word: $longest chars"

The declare built-in casts a variable as an integer here, so that += will add rather than append.

$ ./doit
lines: 1
words: 5
chars: 24
word lengths: 3 3 5 4 4
nonspace chars: 19

Counting characters, words, length of the words and total length in a sentence

7 Answers7

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