Trouble with searching for strings in code

Im working on a code that asks the user to enter a line of text and a word they would like the code to count the number of occurrences for. However, say if I input the line "The fox is running. The rabbit is running." and ask the program to count the number of occurrences for the word "the", it outputs 2. Correct. But if I input the line "thethethethe" and ask the program to count for "the" again then it outputs 0. I don't understand why it counts the occurrence for "the" in the first example correctly but not the second. Can someone take a look and see what Im doing wrong?

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// This program prompts the user to enter a line of text and the 
// word he/she wants to know the number of occurrence for.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <cctype>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
	string line_of_text;
	string word;
	// Prompt user to enter line of text
	cout << "Enter your line of text." << endl;
	getline(cin, line_of_text);
	// Prompt user to enter word for occurence
	cout << "What word do you want to count the number of occurence for?" << endl;
	getline(cin, word);
	// Find occurence
	for (string::size_type i = 0; i < word.length(); i++)
	{
		line_of_text[i] = tolower(line_of_text[i]);
	}
	stringstream ss(line_of_text);
	int count = 0;
	while (ss >> line_of_text)
	{
		if (line_of_text == word)
		{
			count++;
		}
	}
	cout << "The word " << "'" << word << "'" << " occurs " << count << " times." << endl;
	return 0;
}
because you are counting words, not substrings. This is like complaining that your search for tail will not match word cocktail.

If you want to search for substrings, you need to implement different searching algorithm.

This will find a substring word in a larger string text.

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// This program prompts the user to enter a line of text and the
// word he/she wants to know the number of occurrence for.

#include <iostream>
//#include <string>
//#include <sstream>
//#include <cctype>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
	string text="";
	string word="";
	int notFound=0; // flag if word found
	int match=0;    // count times word found

	// Prompt user to enter line of text
	cout << "Enter your line of text.: ";
	getline(cin,text);
	cout << endl;
	// Prompt user to enter word for occurence
	cout << "What word do you want to count the number of occurence for? ";
	getline(cin,word);

	// Find occurence
	if (text.length()>= word.length())
        {
	    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < text.length()-word.length()+1; i++)
	    {
	        notFound = 0;
	        for (unsigned int p=0; p < word.length();p++)
            {
                if (text[i+p] != word[p])
                {
                    notFound = 1;
                }
            }

            if (notFound == 0)
                match = match + 1;

	    }
        }
	cout << "number of times '" << word << "' found in '" << text << "' = " << match << endl;
	return 0;
}

Last edited on
Is counting "the" in "thethethethe" esp. useful? The spaces allow us to identify where the words are. If you count "the" in the string "thereisatheorythatthesetsthetheme" for the word "the" then I'd expect 2 not 5 (there, theory, and theme begin with "the" but aren't that word.)

Andy
Last edited on
Thanks so much my program finally works.
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