First words. A string contains many words. These are separated by spaces. To create a caption of the text, we sometimes need to get the first words from the string.
With a loop, and a char-testing algorithm, we can extract the first N words from a string. We use substring() to extract the first part from the text.
An example. Here is the firstWords method. This method receives two arguments: the string we want to get the first words from, and the number of words to extract. It uses a for-loop.
Start We use the charAt method to count spaces. We decrement the "words" count when a space is encountered.
public class Program {
public static String firstWords(String input, int words) {
for (int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++) {
// When a space is encountered, reduce words remaining by 1.
if (input.charAt(i) == ' ') {
words--;
}
// If no more words remaining, return a substring.
if (words == 0) {
return input.substring(0, i);
}
}
// Error case.
return "";
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String value = "One two three four five.";
System.out.println(value);
// Test firstWords on the first 3 and 4 words.
String words3 = firstWords(value, 3);
System.out.println(words3);
String words4 = firstWords(value, 4);
System.out.println(words4);
}
}One two three four five.
One two three
One two three four
Some issues. The method does not handle an invalid number of words. If you specify a million words and there are not that many words, an empty string will be returned.
A learning exercise. When learning a programming language, writing many simple methods like this one is helpful. Many things can be accomplished with a simple char-testing loop.
Summary. This method extracts the first words from a string. This can be used to create brief summaries of text (or captions for images). First words are often sufficient for labels.
Dot Net Perls is a collection of tested code examples. Pages are continually updated to stay current, with code correctness a top priority.
Sam Allen is passionate about computer languages. In the past, his work has been recommended by Apple and Microsoft and he has studied computers at a selective university in the United States.
This page was last updated on Sep 11, 2023 (edit).