Java Beginner - Counting number of words in sentence

Question

I am suppose to use methods in order to count number of words in the a sentence. I wrote this code and I am not quite sure why it doesn\'t work. No matter what I write, I on

Answer 1

Please check for boundary conditions at str.charAt(i+1). It can result in a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException when the string is terminated by a space.

1. Account for cases where the string starts with a ' '
2. The String could be blank.
3. The definition of a 'word' could differ. For example - '1 2'. Are 1,2 words ?

I know you do not want an alternate method but string.split(" ").length() is an easier way to start.