Counting letters

watson6 · 05-17-2005, 01:31 AM

I am new to JavaScript and would appreciate a little help.
I have a small program to count the number of times a letter a is input. it finishes when a z is input and displays the total number of a's at the end.

This is the code i have and i am sure i am missing something very simple but cannot see it. many thanks.

<html>

<script>

var letter, total;
total = 0;

letter = window.prompt('Please enter a letter, z to
stop', '');

while (letter != 'z')
{

if (letter ='a')
{
total = total + 1
}

letter = window.prompt('Please enter a letter, z to
stop', '')
}

document.write('The number of \'a\'s you have input is
' + total)

</script>

</html>

sde · 05-17-2005, 01:31 PM

you probably want to check each letter instead of assuming the user will enter a z. try this:

HTML Code:

<script>

var letter, length, total;
total = 0;

letter = window.prompt('Please enter a letter, z to stop', '');
length = letter.length;

var my_array = letter.split("");

for(var i=0;i<length;i++){
  
  if( my_array[i] == 'a' ){
    total++;
  }
}


document.write('The number of \'a\'s you have input is ' + total)

</script>

it will only work in IE though ( i think )