Flesch Readability Index in Visual Basic - vb.net

Question

I'm working on a program that is supposed to perform the calculations for the Flesch Readability Index. The program is supposed to read in a text file "Project7.txt", it's then supposed to display the text in a multi-line text box and perform the following calculations:
Count the number of words in the file.
Count the number of syllables in the file.
Count the number of sentences in the file (a sentence can be ended by a ".", "?", "!", or ":"
The program is then supposed to plug the values into the following formula and display the result in a label (label1).
206.835-85.6*(Number of syllables/Number of words) - 1.015*(Number of words/Number of sentences)
Here is the code I have written so far.
Option Strict On
Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
Private Sub ExitToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles ExitToolStripMenuItem.Click
Me.Close()
End Sub
Private Sub OpenToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles OpenToolStripMenuItem.Click
Dim open As New OpenFileDialog
open.Filter = "text files |project7.txt|All file |*.*"
open.InitialDirectory = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.DesktopDirectory)
If open.ShowDialog() = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then
Dim selectedFileName As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(open.FileName)
If selectedFileName.ToLower = "project7.txt" Then
Dim doc As String = ""
Dim line As String
Using reader As New StreamReader(open.OpenFile)
While Not reader.EndOfStream
doc += reader.ReadLine
Console.WriteLine(line)
End While
Dim text = File.ReadAllText("Project7.txt")
Dim words = text.Split(" "c)
Dim wordCount = words.Length
Dim separators As Char() = {"."c, "!"c, "?"c, ":"c}
Dim sentences = text.Split(separators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
Dim sentenceCount = sentences.Length
End Using
Else
MessageBox.Show("You cannot use that file!")
End If
End If
End Sub
Function CountSyllables(word As String) As Integer
word = word.ToLower()
Dim dipthongs = {"oo", "ou", "ie", "oi", "ea", "ee", _
"eu", "ai", "ua", "ue", "au", "io"}
For Each dipthong In dipthongs
word = word.Replace(dipthong, dipthong(0))
Next
Dim vowels = "aeiou"
Dim vowelCount = 0
For Each c In word
If vowels.IndexOf(c) >= 0 Then vowelCount += 1
Next
Return vowelCount
End Function
End Class
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help.

Answer 1

Is the code always reporting one more sentence than there actually is?
If so take a look at this from the String.Split method MSDN docs:
When the Split function encounters two delimiters in a row, or a
delimiter at the beginning or end of the string, it interprets them as
surrounding an empty string ("")...
I'm sure your last sentence ends with your sentence delimiter so what's happening is your assignment to sentences is getting an extra, empty array element. See for yourself by breakpointing the line after your assignment and hovering your mouse over sentences. Examine the contents of the array.
The fix is to call Split with the option to remove empty array values. To do that though you'll need to call the Split overload that takes an array of Char for the delimiters:
Replace this line:
Dim sentences = text.Split("."c, "!"c, "?"c, ":"c)
With this:
Dim separators As Char() = {"."c, "!"c, "?"c, ":"c}
Dim sentences = text.Split(separators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
And you should be good.