Count words in an external file using delimiter of a space - vb.net

Question

I want to calculate the number of words in a text file using a delimiter of a space (" "), however I am struggling.
Dim counter = 0
Dim delim = " "
Dim fields() As String
fields = Nothing
Dim line As String
line = Input
While (SR.EndOfStream)
line = SR.ReadLine()
End While
Console.WriteLine(vbLf & "Reading File.. ")
fields = line.Split(delim.ToCharArray())
For i = 0 To fields.Length
counter = counter + 1
Next
SR.Close()
Console.WriteLine(vbLf & "The word count is {0}", counter)
I do not know how to open the file and to get the do this, very confused; would like an explanation so I can edit and understand from it.

Answer 1

You're going to be reading a file as the source of the data, so let's create a variable to refer to its filename:
Dim srcFile = "C:\temp\twolines.txt"
As you have shown already, a variable is needed to hold the number of words found:
Dim counter = 0
To read from the file, a StreamReader will do the job. Now, we look at the documenation for it (yes, really) and notice that it has a Dispose method. That means that we have to explicitly dispose of it after we've used it to make sure that no system resources are tied up until the computer is next rebooted (e.g there could be a "memory leak"). Fortunately, there is the Using construct to take care of that for us:
Using sr As New StreamReader(srcFile)
And now we want to iterate over the content of the file line-by-line until the end of the file:
While Not sr.EndOfStream
Then we want to read a line and find how many items separated by spaces it has:
counter += sr.ReadLine().Split({" "c}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Length
The += operator is like saying "add n to a" instead of saying "a = a + n". The {" "c} is a literal array of the character " "c. The c tells it that is a character and not a string of one character. The StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries means that if there was text of "one two" then it would ignore the extra spaces.
So, if you were writing a console program, it might look like:
Imports System.IO
Module Module1
Sub Main()
Dim srcFile = "C:\temp\twolines.txt"
Dim counter = 0
Using sr As New StreamReader(srcFile)
While Not sr.EndOfStream
counter += sr.ReadLine().Split({" "c}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Length
End While
End Using
Console.WriteLine(counter)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Module
Any embellishments such as writing out what the number represents or error checking are left up to you.

Answer 2

With Path.Combine you don't have to worry about where the slashes or back slashes go. You can get the path of special folders easily using the Environment class. The File class of System.IO is shared so you don't have to create an instance.
Public Sub Main()
Dim p As String = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments), "Chapters.txt")
Debug.Print(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments.ToString)
Dim count As Integer = GetCount(p)
Console.WriteLine(count)
Console.ReadKey()
End Sub
Private Function GetCount(Path As String) As Integer
Dim s = File.ReadAllText(Path)
Return s.Split().Length
End Function

Answer 3

Use Split function, then Directly get the length of result array and add 1 to it.