To Extract the words from the Text and Sort them into Alphabetical Order

Write a program that sets up a String variable containing a paragraph of text of your choice.

Extract the words from the text and sort them into alphabetical order. Display the sorted list of words.

You could use a simple sorting method called the bubble sort. To sort an array into ascending order the process is as follows:

•   Starting with the first element in the array, compare successive elements (0 and 1, 1 and 2, 2 and 3, and so on).
•   If the first element of any pair is greater than the second, interchange the two elements.
•   Repeat the process for the whole array until no interchanges are necessary. The array elements are now in ascending order.

This solution scans the string character by character to extract words. You cannot conveniently use a StringTokenizer object or the indexOf() method in the String class because a word can end with a space or a punctuation character such as a period or a comma. For simplicity, I have assumed that a single quote is always part of a word.

public class Sort {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    // Declare the String that is to be sorted:
    String text = "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace " +
                  "of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes crept a look of furtive " +
                  "shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that " +
                  "an Englishman is about to talk French." ;


    // Determine how many words there are.
    // A word is a sequence of letters that may include a single quote character.
    // Anything else is punctuation or spaces.
    int count = 0;                                                    // Counts number of words
    boolean isWord = false;                                            // Indicates start of a word found
    for (int i = 0 ; i < text.length() ; ++i) {
      if(isWord) {                                                     // If we have found a word...
        if(Character.isLetter(text.charAt(i)) || text.charAt(i) == '\'')
          continue;                                                    // ...pass over letters or single quote
        else                                                           // It is not a letter or single quote...
          isWord = false;                                              // so we have come to the end of the word
      }
      else if(Character.isLetter(text.charAt(i))) {
                                                                       // We have the first letter of a new word
          count++;                                                     // so increment word count
          isWord = true;                                               // and record we have found a word
      }
    }

    // Create the array of strings to contain all the words:
    String[] words = new String[count];

    // Now extract the words from the text
    int start = 0;                                                     // Position of first letter of a word
    int wordIndex = 0;                                                 // Current vacant words array element
    isWord = false;                                                    // Indicates when a word start is found
    for (int i = 0 ; i < text.length() ; ++i) {
      if(!isWord) {                                                    // If we are not in a word...
        if(Character.isLetter(text.charAt(i))) {                       // look for first letter of a word.
          start = i;                                                   // Record word start index
          isWord = true;                                               // We have a word
        }
      }
      else {                                                           // We are in a word
        if(Character.isLetter(text.charAt(i)) || text.charAt(i) == '\'')
          continue;                                                    // Still the same word so continue
        else {                                                         // It is the end of the word
          isWord = false;                                              // so reset word indicator
          words[wordIndex++] = text.substring(start,i);                // and extract the word
        }
      }
    }
    // If the text ends with a letter, we will not have stored the last word
    if(wordIndex < words.length)
      words[wordIndex] = text.substring(start);

    // Sort the array of words
    String temp = null;                                                // Stores a word reference
    boolean exchange = true;                                           // Indicate we exchanged a pair of words
    while(exchange) {
      exchange = false;                                                // No exchange so far
      for(int i = 1 ; i < words.length ; ++i) {                        // For each word starting with the second
        if(words[i-1].compareTo(words[i]) > 0) {                       // If the previous word is greater
          temp = words[i];                                             // exchange them
          words[i] = words[i-1];
          words[i-1] = temp;
          exchange = true;                                             // and record that exchange occurred
        }
      }
    }

    // Display the sorted array of words:
    for(String word : words) {
      System.out.println(word);
    }
  }
}

Output of Above Java Program
Cannes
Englishman
French
Hotel
Into
Magnifique
a
about
an
announces
at
crept
face
furtive
hangdog
is
look
look
man
of
of
of
on
sat
shame
shifty
talk
terrace
that
the
the
the
the
the
to
which
who
young