Word Count Function

[mdmartiny]

I am writing a function to count the words that have been typed into a text box. I originally had it working when I first wrote it but it was counting all of the punctuation as a word so I I tried adding some code to eliminate that. Now it is not working. Could someone help me?

 

Here is my code

function count_words($description){
	 $word_count = 0;
	 $description = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$description));
	 $word_array = explode(" ", $description);

	 for($i=0; $i < count($word_array); $i++){
		if (preg_match("[0-9A-Za-z]", $word_array[$i])) {
			$word_count++;
		}
		return $word_count;
	}
  }

[scootstah]

You can use str_word_count, and remove any punctuation first.

 

function count_words($description)
{
// remove punctuation
$punctuation = array('.', ',', '!', '?', ':', ';', '(', ')');	
$description = str_replace($punctuation, '', $description);

return str_word_count($description);
}

 

 

[ignace]

You can use str_word_count, and remove any punctuation first.

 

function count_words($description) {
// remove punctuation
$punctuation = array('.', ',', '!', '?', ':', ';', '(', ')');	
$description = str_replace($punctuation, '', $description);

return str_word_count($description);
}

 

No need to remove the punctuation, str_word_count is intelligent enough to know that punctuation is not a word.

 

echo str_word_count($description);

[mdmartiny]

I made the changes to it.. Now all I am is getting the number 0 when I should be getting the number 2.

[ignace]

Post your code. Why did you set the topic to solved if you are still having an issue?

[mdmartiny]

function count_words($description){

$word_count = 0;

                $punctuation = array('.', ',', '!', '?', ':', ';', '(', ')');

        $description = str_replace($punctuation, '', $description);

$description = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$description));

$word_array = explode(" ", $description);

 

for($i=0; $i < count($word_array); $i++){

if (preg_match("[0-9A-Za-z]", $word_array[$i])) {

$word_count++;

}

return $word_count;

}

  }

[ignace]

You don't need the count_words function just use str_word_count like i showed you earlier.

[mdmartiny]

oh ok ..... I thought that had to be part of the function... Thank You