Question ControlChars.NewLine

[belozero]

hello, i'm new to the forum, and a bit new to vb as well. i'm in 11th grade in i'm taking a programming class [and absolutely loving it]. the assignment he just gave us was just to create something useful, within certain parameters of course. i ended up choosing a text document browser, something in between MS word and notepad. i seem to have hit a little snag though; i am trying to do a WordCount function. Here is my code:

Private Sub WordCount()
        Dim x As Integer
        Dim s As String = RichTextBox1.Text
        Dim spaceCounted As Boolean = False


        For i As Integer = 0 To CInt(RichTextBox1.Text.Length) - 1

            If spaceCounted = False Then
                'bug fixed: now only spaces after other characters are counted, not multiple spaces in a row
                If s(i) = ControlChars.NewLine Then
                    x += 1
                    spaceCounted = True

                End If

                If s(i) = " " Then
                    x += 1
                    spaceCounted = True

                End If


            ElseIf spaceCounted = True Then
                'checks to see if a new word started, the the space after the word triggers "+=1" on word count

                If Not (s(i) = " " Or s(i) = ControlChars.NewLine) Then

                    spaceCounted = False

                End If

            End If

        Next

        tssWordCount.Text = "WordCount: " & x.ToString

    End Sub

right now, what this code does basically is finds every space after any character that is not a space, and "x += 1" it to a counter. after i checked for spaces, i realised my code didn't account for words at the end of a line unless i added a space after it. also, it counts a space at the beginning of a line as a word. so i did some debugging. i found that, if you rollover string "s" while debugging i couldnt find the newline character anywhere. my forloops weren't either, obviously. i even tried changing the newline character to something else to get it to recognize it:

s = RichTextBox1.Text
s.Replace(ControlChars.NewLine, "¾")

i used "¾" becasue i didn't want it being a common character that could cause a flaw in the counting. but either way, it didn't find any newline character anywhere and nothing was replaced.

please help! i'm sure there's something incredibly simple i'm missing. thank you!

 

[jmcilhinney]

If I remember correctly, the RichTextBox uses just line feed characters as line breaks. In Windows the default line break is a carriage return followed by a line feed, while on other platforms it is just a line feed. Windows supports the line feed alone for compatibility. Try using ControlChars.Lf instead of ControlChars.NewLine and you may find it works as you expect.

Also, it may be a little advanced for you but you can very simply use regular expressions to count words, which are implemented via the Regex class in .NET. The pattern for words is very simple so if you search the web for regular expressions and word counts you will no doubt find examples.

 

[belozero]

Thank you so much, it works perfectly! I spent all weekend trying different ways to work it out because my internet is out, so i got to school and checked the forums hoping somebody had posted :] thanks for the help~