Question

I am attempting to search a user input array of text with another user input array of search terms using nested loops and then output the search terms with the number of times they appear in the text along with the percentage of total text. I think I am on the right track and my issue is that the counter is not resetting each time the if statement is true. I am very new to programming — so I could be completely wrong. Below is the entire program. If anyone could take a look and give me a hand at figuring out what my issue is I would be eternally grateful.

public class termFrequency {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String searchTextPeriod, searchTextComma, searchTextApostrophe, searchTextColon, searchTextExclamation, 
        searchTextQuestion, searchText, searchTerm;
        int counter=0, total, searchIndex=0, termIndex=0;
        double percentage=0.0;
        String [] searchArray, termArray;


        searchText = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter a sentence that is at least 20 words long");

        //removes some common punctuation from the searchable text
        searchTextPeriod = searchText.replace(".", "");
        searchTextComma = searchTextPeriod.replace(",", "");
        searchTextApostrophe = searchTextComma.replace("'", " ");
        searchTextColon = searchTextApostrophe.replace(":", " ");
        searchTextExclamation = searchTextColon.replace("!", "");
        searchTextQuestion = searchTextExclamation.replace("?", "");

        searchArray = searchTextQuestion.split(" "); //splits the sentence and and puts it into an array

        total=searchArray.length;
        System.out.println("There are " +total +" words in your sentence");

        searchTerm = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter your search terms here seperated by a space");
        termArray = searchTerm.split(" ");
        DecimalFormat two = new DecimalFormat("#0.00");

        boolean found = false;
        for (termIndex=0; termIndex<termArray.length; termIndex++) 
        {
            for (searchIndex=0; searchIndex<searchArray.length; searchIndex++) 

                if (termArray[termIndex].equalsIgnoreCase(searchArray[searchIndex]))
                {
                    counter++; 
                    found = true;

                    percentage= ((double) counter/(double)total) * 100;
                }
                if (found) 
                    System.out.println("Search word " + "\'" + termArray[termIndex] + "\' is found " +counter +" times. That is "+ two.format(percentage)+"% of the statement." );
                else  
                    System.out.println("Search word " + "\'" + termArray[termIndex] + "\' is not found in the statement.");

            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

You have to move the if/else on “found” from the inner loop to the end of the first loop.
You also need to reset the boolean and the counter in the first loop, like that you start the analysis of each new word in termArray with initial values.

   for (termIndex=0; termIndex<termArray.length; termIndex++) 
    {
        counter=0; //Reset the counter for each word in termArray
        found=false; //Reset the "found" flag for each word in termArray
        for (searchIndex=0; searchIndex<searchArray.length; searchIndex++) 

            if (termArray[termIndex].equalsIgnoreCase(searchArray[searchIndex]))
            {
                counter++;
                percentage= ((double) counter/(double)total) * 100;

                found=true
                System.out.println("Search word " + "\'" + termArray[termIndex] + "\' is found " +counter +" times. That is "+ two.format(percentage)+"% of the statement." );
            }
        }
        if (found) 
                System.out.println("Search word " + "\'" + termArray[termIndex] + "\' is found " +counter +" times. That is "+ two.format(percentage)+"% of the statement." );
        else  
                System.out.println("Search word " + "\'" + termArray[termIndex] + "\' is not found in the statement.");

    }

By the way you don’t really need the “found” var, now if counter == 0 you know that the word has not been found in searchArray.