Thread: I need help counting the number of times a letter appears in a string, for a-z

I recently got an assignment to input a string and count how many times each letter appears in the alphabet. First I have to set all letters to Caps, then convert all ASCII numbers to 0 through 25 (A = 0 instead of 65). Finally, I have to count how many times each letter appears. I need help on this last part because the first two are easy. I found this code pasted 9 years ago:

Code:

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#define     MAX_LENGTH      256
 
#include <stdio.h>
 
int main() {
    char sentance[MAX_LENGTH];      // Holds the sentance
    int x = 0;                      // Holds the current posistion for the search
    int y = 0;                      // Holds total number of a's found
     
    printf("Enter a sentance\n");   // Gets input
    fgets(sentance, MAX_LENGTH, stdin);
     
    while(sentance[x] != '\0') {    // Loop threw sentance
        if(sentance[x] == 'a')      // Chech to see if the current character is a a
            ++y;                    // It is, add one to y
             
        ++x;                        // Update posistion
    }
     
    printf("\nThere are %i letter a's in your sentance\n", y);  // Print answer
 
    return 0;
}
 
// Wonder why I did c++ comments in c code when I dont do c++

Now this would work except I'm not allowed to use 26 If statements. Anyone have any ideas?

P.S. - One idea I have is making another array so I don't have 26 variables for each letter of the alphabet, so exampleArray[26] = 0;
But, I don't know how you would assign, say, the letter A to 1 and then If exampleArray[1] = A then (Acount++). But, this would just lead to another 26 If statements. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[NOTE: This is pseudocode and I'm just giving an idea of what it would do.]