Need help with method to prompt for a series of words (dialogue boxes) and average

[dingling]

The method should repeatedly ask the user to enter the next word until the user signals the end of the series of words by entering a "*".
The method should then calculate the average length of all the words (not including the "*") and then return the average as a double value.

public static double averageLength()
{
int count = 0;
boolean numberOfCharacters = 0;
String word = "";
while (!word.equals("*"))
{
word = OUDialog.request("Please enter next word");
numberOfCharacters = numberOfCharacters + word.length();
count++;
}
return numberOfCharacters / count;
}


For some reason it seems to include the "*" as a word and I only want "*" to end the while loop. Please help

[Fou-Lu]

You're not doing anything to stop the * from being counted both length wise and count wise within the loop. You'll need to add an if in there to only handle the numberOfCharacters and the count if the word is not *.

[dingling]

thanks, fixed it now.