Question:

Write a program to find the shortest and the longest word in a sentence and print them along with
their length.
Sample Input: I am learning Java
Sample Output:
Shortest word = I
Length = 1
Longest word = learning
Length = 8
Solution:
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/**
* The class Short_long_word finds and displays the shortest and the longest word in a
sentence along with their lengths
* @author : www.javaforschool.com
* @Program Type : BlueJ Program - Java
*/

import java.io.*;
class Short_long_word
{
public static void main(String args[])throws IOException
{
BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
System.out.print("Enter any sentence : "); //inputting the sentence
String s=br.readLine();

s=s+" "; //adding a space at the end, to extract the last word also
int len=s.length(); //finding the length of the sentence
String x="",maxw="",minw="";
char ch;
int p,maxl=0,minl=len;

for(int i=0;i<len;i++)
{
ch=s.charAt(i); //extracting characters of the string one at a time
if(ch!=' ')
{
x=x+ch; //adding characters to form word if character is not space
}
else
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{
p=x.length();

if(p<minl) //checking for minimum length
{
minl=p;
minw=x;
}

if(p>maxl) //checking for maximum length
{
maxl=p;
maxw=x;
}
x=""; //emptying the temporary variable to store next word
}
}
System.out.println("Shortest word = "+minw+"nLength = "+minl);
System.out.println("Longest word = "+maxw+"nLength = "+maxl);
}
}
Output:
Enter any sentence : I am learning Java
Shortest word = I
Length = 1
Longest word = learning
Length = 8
Working Principle:
In the above program, we have declared 3 String variables, x for storing each word of a sentence
temporarily, minw for storing the shortest word and maxw for storing the longest word.
Similarly, we have defined 3 integer variables, p for storing the length of the temporary word stored
in x, and initialized minl with the length of the original string and maxl with 0.
Note: We have not initialized minl with 0 because whatever be the word in the sentence, its length
will always be greater than 0, hence we will not get the shortest word.
The technique used for taking out words from the sentence one at a time is that we extract all
characters one by one and add them to a temporary String variable x until we get a space.
Once we get a space, we know that a word has ended.
Note: Since we know that when we encounter a space, a word has ended, so to implement this
concept we added a space at the end of the original string, otherwise the last word will not be
extracted.
In the for loop, we are extracting one characetr at a time and storing it in a character variable ch.
In this loop we check whether this character is a space or not. If we dont get a space, the if block
executes and the character is added to the temporary variable x.
As soon as we get a space, we have got a word, and hence the control goes to the else block,
where we find the length of that word.
Then we compare whether the length of this word is less than the value stored in the variable minl.
If it is so, then that length is transferred to the variable minl and the corresponding word x is
transferred to the variable minw.
Similarly, we compare whether the length of this word is greater than the value stored in the variable
maxl. If it is so, then that length is transferred to the variable maxl and the corresponding word x
is transferred to the variable maxw.
In the end, we are emptying the temporary String variable x in order to make it ready to accept the
next word.
Finally we are printing the shortest and the longest word in the sentence along with their lengths.


Source: http://www.javaforschool.com/335-program-to-find-the-shortest-and-longest-word-in-a-
sentence-method-1/#ixzz3CbPgRw7b