Word Frequency Counter in Java: Explanation & Practice

Problem summary

Read a text file and count the frequency of each word, then print top 5.

Starter code

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Read file, count word frequencies
        // Print top 5 words with counts
        // Format: word: count
    }
}

Expected output and test cases

• Top 5 words

  the: 10
  a: 8
  is: 6
  to: 5
  and: 4

• Simple file

  hello: 3
  world: 2
  java: 1

• Empty file

  empty file

Hints

1. Split lines into words
2. Use HashMap for counting
3. Sort by value descending

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