Counting for only words in a file using a scanner Java

Question

I am trying to get into java and i am stuck on a problem which is to count only words in a java file using a scanner

while (sc.hasNextLine()) {
 sc.next(); 

 count++; } 

and this is the answer to most of the questions i have seen although this counts everything including numbers punctuation etc.

So what is the best approach to check for words only ?

Answer 1

You could keep your original code, and them match it with (allows apostrophes but doesn't allow apostrophes at the start)

if (word.matches("[a-zA-Z']+") && !word.matches("'")) {

}