C Programming: Find the number of times the word 'the' in any combination appears

Last update on August 06 2025 13:02:34 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

16. Count Word Occurrences

Write a program in C to find the number of timesa given word 'the' appears in the given string.

Sample Solution:

C Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main() {
    int ctr = 0, i, freq = 0; // Declare variables for counting, iteration, and frequency
    int t, h, e, spc; // Variables to check for 'the ' pattern
    char str[100]; // Declare a character array to store the string

    printf("\n\nFind the number of times the word 'the ' in any combination appears :\n"); // Display information about the task
    printf("----------------------------------------------------------------------\n");

    printf("Input the string : ");
    fgets(str, sizeof str, stdin); // Read a string from the standard input (keyboard)

    ctr = strlen(str); // Calculate the length of the string

    /* Counts the frequency of the word 'the' with a trailing space */
    for (i = 0; i <= ctr - 3; i++) {
        // Check if the characters form 'the ' pattern (regardless of case)
        t = (str[i] == 't' || str[i] == 'T');
        h = (str[i + 1] == 'h' || str[i + 1] == 'H');
        e = (str[i + 2] == 'e' || str[i + 2] == 'E');
        spc = (str[i + 3] == ' ' || str[i + 3] == '\0');

        // Increment frequency if 'the ' pattern is found
        if ((t && h && e && spc) == 1)
            freq++;
    }

    printf("The frequency of the word \'the\' is : %d\n\n", freq); // Display the frequency of 'the '
	
	return 0; // Return 0 to indicate successful execution of the program
}

Output:

Find the number of times the word 'the ' in any combination appears :                                                         
----------------------------------------------------------------------                                                        
Input the string : The stering where the word the present more then onces.                                                     
The frequency of the word 'the' is : 3

Flowchart:

Flowchart: Find the number of times the word 'the ' in any combination appears

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a C program to count the occurrences of a specific word in a sentence regardless of its case.
Write a C program to search for a word in a string and output all starting positions of its occurrences.
Write a C program to count overlapping occurrences of a substring within a larger string.
Write a C program to manually parse a sentence and count the frequency of each word without using strtok().

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