How to display string letters sorted by frequency in Java

1 Answer

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import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Comparator;

public class LetterFrequency {

    // Pair structure: (letter, frequency)
    static class Pair {
        char letter;
        int freq;

        Pair(char letter, int freq) {
            this.letter = letter;
            this.freq = freq;
        }
    }

    // sortByFrequency — counts how often each letter appears and returns a sorted list
    public static ArrayList<Pair> sortByFrequency(String s) {
        int[] freq = new int[26];  // frequency array for 26 lowercase letters

        // Iterate through the string and count only alphabetic characters
        for (char c : s.toCharArray()) {
            if (Character.isLetter(c)) {
                freq[Character.toLowerCase(c) - 'a']++;
            }
        }

        // Build a list of (letter, frequency) pairs
        ArrayList<Pair> result = new ArrayList<>();
        for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
            result.add(new Pair((char) ('a' + i), freq[i]));
        }

        // Sort pairs by frequency in descending order
        Collections.sort(result, new Comparator<Pair>() {
            @Override
            public int compare(Pair a, Pair b) {
                return Integer.compare(b.freq, a.freq); // descending
            }
        });

        return result;
    }

    // Build a string sorted by frequency: ddddddddddddccccccbbbbbaaaafffeehhgs
    public static String buildSortedString(ArrayList<Pair> sorted) {
        StringBuilder out = new StringBuilder();

        for (Pair p : sorted) {
            // append 'p.letter' repeated p.freq times
            for (int i = 0; i < p.freq; i++) {
                out.append(p.letter);
            }
        }

        return out.toString();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Input text to analyze
        String text = "bbcabddddccafffadbbcdccsedddddhhgade";

        // Get sorted frequency list
        ArrayList<Pair> sorted = sortByFrequency(text);

        // Print each letter and its frequency
        for (Pair p : sorted) {
            if (p.freq != 0)
                System.out.println(p.letter + ": " + p.freq);
        }

        // Print the reconstructed sorted string
        String lettersSortedByFrequency = buildSortedString(sorted);
        System.out.println("\nSorted string: " + lettersSortedByFrequency);
    }
}


/*
run:

d: 12
c: 6
b: 5
a: 4
f: 3
e: 2
h: 2
g: 1
s: 1

Sorted string: ddddddddddddccccccbbbbbaaaafffeehhgs

*/

 



answered 2 days ago by avibootz
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