i'm having trouble with a code. I have read words from a text file into a String array, removed the periods and commas. Now i need to check the number of occurrences of each word. I managed to do that as well. However, my output contains all the words in the file, and the occurrences. 
Like this:
the 2
birds 2
are 1
going 2
north 2
north 2

Here is my code: 

```
public static String counter(String[] wordList)
{
    //String[] noRepeatString = null ;
    //int[] countArr = null ;

    for (int i = 0; i < wordList.length; i++) 
    {
         int count = 1;
         for(int j = 0; j < wordList.length; j++)
         {
             if(i != j)  //to avoid comparing itself
             {
                 if (wordList[i].compareTo(wordList[j]) == 0)   
                 {
                     count++;
                     //noRepeatString[i] = wordList[i];
                     //countArr[i] = count;
                 }
             }
         }

         System.out.println (wordList[i] + " " + count);

     }

    return null; 

```

I need to figure out 1) to get the count value into an array.. 2) to delete the repetitions. 
As seen in the commenting, i tried to use a countArr[] and a noRepeatString[], in hopes of doing that.. but i had a NullPointerException.

Any thought on this matter will be much appreciated :)