I'd like to search through a txt file for a particular word. If I find that word, I'd like to retrieve the word that immediately follows it in the file. If my text file contained:
"My name is Jay and I want to go to the store"
I'd be searching for the word "want", and would want to add the word "to" to my array. I'll be looking through a very big text file, so any notes on performance would be great too.
The most literal way to read that might look like this:
a = []
str = "My name is Jack and I want to go to the store"
str.scan(/\w+/).each_cons(2) {|x, y| a << y if x == 'to'}
a
#=> ["go", "the"]
To read the file into a string use File.read.
This is one way:
Code
def find_next(fname, word)
enum = IO.foreach(fname)
loop do
e = (enum.next).scan(/\w+/)
ndx = e.index(word)
if ndx
return e[ndx+1] if ndx < e.size-1
loop do
e = enum.next
break if e =~ /\w+/
end
return e[/\w+/]
end
end
nil
end
Example
text =<<_
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
. . . . .
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…
_
FName = "two_cities"
File.write(FName, text)
find_next(FName, "worst")
# of
find_next(FName, "wisdom")
# it
find_next(FName, "foolishness")
# it
find_next(FName, "dispair")
#=> nil
find_next(FName, "magpie")
#=> nil
Shorter, but less efficient, and problematic with large files:
File.read(FName)[/(?<=\b#{word}\b)\W+(\w+)/,1]
This is probably not the fastest way to do it, but something along these lines should work:
filename = "/path/to/filename"
target_word = "weasel"
next_word = ""
File.open(filename).each_line do |line|
line.split.each_with_index do |word, index|
if word == target_word
next_word = line.split[index + 1]
end
end
end
Given a File, String, or StringIO stored in file:
pattern, match = 'want', nil
catch :found do
file.each_line do |line|
line.split.each_cons(2) do |words|
if words[0] == pattern
match = words.pop
throw :found
end
end
end
end
match
#=> "to"
Note that this answer will find at most one match per file for speed, and linewise operation will save memory. If you want to find multiple matches per file, or find matches across line breaks, then this other answer is probably the way to go. YMMV.
This is the fastest I could come up with, assuming your file is loaded in a string:
word = 'want'
array = []
string.scan(/\b#{word}\b\s(\w+)/) do
array << $1
end
This will find ALL words that follow your particular word. So for example:
word = 'want'
string = 'My name is Jay and I want to go and I want a candy'
array = []
string.scan(/\b#{word}\b\s(\w+)/) do
array << $1
end
p array #=> ["to", "a"]
Testing this on my machine where I duplicated this string 500,000 times, I was able to reach 0.6 seconds execution time. I've also tried other approaches like splitting the string etc. but this was the fastest solution:
require 'benchmark'
Benchmark.bm do |bm|
bm.report do
word = 'want'
string = 'My name is Jay and I want to go and I want a candy' * 500_000
array = []
string.scan(/\b#{word}\b\s(\w+)/) do
array << $1
end
end
end
Related
My purpose is to accept a paragraph of text and find the specified phrase I want to REDACT, or replace.
I made a method that accepts an argument as a string of text. I break down that string into individual characters. Those characters are compared, and if they match, I replace those characters with *.
def search_redact(text)
str = ""
print "What is the word you would like to redact?"
redacted_name = gets.chomp
puts "Desired word to be REDACTED #{redacted_name}! "
#splits name to be redacted, and the text argument into char arrays
redact = redacted_name.split("")
words = text.split("")
#takes char arrays, two loops, compares each character, if they match it
#subs that character out for an asterisks
redact.each do |x|
if words.each do |y|
x == y
y.gsub!(x, '*') # sub redact char with astericks if matches words text
end # end loop for words y
end # end if statment
end # end loop for redact x
# this adds char array to a string so more readable
words.each do |z|
str += z
end
# prints it out so we can see, and returns it to method
print str
return str
end
# calling method with test case
search_redact("thisisapassword")
#current issues stands, needs to erase only if those STRING of characters are
# together and not just anywehre in the document
If I put in a phrase that shares characters with others parts of the text, for example, if I call:
search_redact("thisisapassword")
then it will replace that text too. When it accepts input from the user, I want to get rid of only the text password. But it then looks like this:
thi*i**********
Please help.
This is a classic windowing problem used to find a substring in a string. There are many ways to solve this, some that are much more efficient than others but I'm going to give you a simple one to look at that uses as much of your original code as possible:
def search_redact(text)
str = ""
print "What is the word you would like to redact?"
redacted_name = gets.chomp
puts "Desired word to be REDACTED #{redacted_name}! "
redacted_name = "password"
#splits name to be redacted, and the text argument into char arrays
redact = redacted_name.split("")
words = text.split("")
words.each.with_index do |letter, i|
# use windowing to look for exact matches
if words[i..redact.length + i] == redact
words[i..redact.length + i].each.with_index do |_, j|
# change the letter to an astrisk
words[i + j] = "*"
end
end
end
words.join
end
# calling method with test case
search_redact("thisisapassword")
The idea here is we're taking advantage of array == which allows us to say ["a", "b", "c"] == ["a", "b", "c"]. So now we just walk the input and ask does this sub array equal this other sub array. If they do match, we know we need to change the value so we loop through each element and replace it with a *.
So i'm working on a function that combines different configuration files
I'm looping trough a configuration file and when I see a specific word (In this example "Test" I want this to be replaced with a File (Multiple Lines of text)
I have this for now
def self.configIncludes(config)
config = #configpath #path to config
combinedconfig = #configpath #for test purposes
doc = File.open(config)
text = doc.read
combinedConfig = text.gsub("test" , combinedconfig)
puts combinedConfig
So now I just replace my string "test" with combinedconfig but the output of this is my directory of where the config is placed
How do I replace it with text ?
All help is appreciated!
If the files are not large you could do the following.
Code
def replace_text(file_in, file_out, word_to_filename)
File.write(file_out,
File.read(file_in).gsub(Regexp.union(word_to_filename.keys)) { |word|
File.read(word_to_filename[word]) })
end
word_to_filename is a hash such that the key word is a to be replaced by the contents of the file named word_to_filename[word].
If the files are large, do this line-by-line, perhaps using IO#foreach.
Example
file_in = "input_file"
file_out = "output_file"
File.write(file_in, "Days of wine\n and roses")
#=> 23
File.write("wine_replacement", "only darkness")
#=> 13
File.write("roses_replacement", "no light")
#=> 8
word_to_filename = { "wine"=>"wine_replacement", "roses"=>"roses_replacement" }
replace_text(file_in, file_out, word_to_filename)
#=> 35
puts File.read(file_out)
Days of only darkness
and no light
Explanation
For file_in, file_out and word_to_filename I used in the above example, the steps are as follows.
str0 = File.read(file_in)
#=> "Days of wine\n and roses"
r = Regexp.union(word_to_filename.keys)
#=> /wine|roses/
Let's first see which words match the regex:
str0.scan(r)
#=> ["wine", "roses"]
Continuing,
str1 = str0.gsub(r) { |word| File.read(word_to_filename[word]) }
#=> "Days of only darkness\n and no light"
File.write(file_out, str1)
#=> 35
In computing str1, the gsub first matches the the word "wine". That string is therefore passed to the block and assigned to the block variable:
word = "wine"
and the block calculation is performed:
str2 = word_to_filename[word]
#=> word_to_filename["wine"]
#=> "wine_replacement"
File.read("wine_replacement")
#=> "only darkness"
so "wine" is replaced with "only darkness". The match on "roses" is processed similarly.
I'm attempting to write a function that takes a string and returns it with all vowels removed. Below is my code.
def vowel(str)
result = ""
new = str.split(" ")
i = 0
while i < new.length
if new[i] == "a"
i = i + 1
elsif new[i] != "a"
result = new[i] + result
end
i = i + 1
end
return result
end
When I run the code, it returns the exact string that I entered for (str). For example, if I enter "apple", it returns "apple".
This was my original code. It had the same result.
def vowel(str)
result = ""
new = str.split(" ")
i = 0
while i < new.length
if new[i] != "a"
result = new[i] + result
end
i = i + 1
end
return result
end
I need to know what I am doing wrong using this methodology. What am I doing wrong?
Finding the bug
Let's see what's wrong with your original code by executing your method's code in IRB:
$ irb
irb(main):001:0> str = "apple"
#=> "apple"
irb(main):002:0> new = str.split(" ")
#=> ["apple"]
Bingo! ["apple"] is not the expected result. What does the documentation for String#split say?
split(pattern=$;, [limit]) → anArray
Divides str into substrings based on a delimiter, returning an array of these substrings.
If pattern is a String, then its contents are used as the delimiter when splitting str. If pattern is a single space, str is split on whitespace, with leading whitespace and runs of contiguous whitespace characters ignored.
Our pattern is a single space, so split returns an array of words. This is definitely not what we want. To get the desired result, i.e. an array of characters, we could pass an empty string as the pattern:
irb(main):003:0> new = str.split("")
#=> ["a", "p", "p", "l", "e"]
"split on empty string" feels a bit hacky and indeed there's another method that does exactly what we want: String#chars
chars → an_array
Returns an array of characters in str. This is a shorthand for str.each_char.to_a.
Let's give it a try:
irb(main):004:0> new = str.chars
#=> ["a", "p", "p", "l", "e"]
Perfect, just as advertised.
Another bug
With the new method in place, your code still doesn't return the expected result (I'm going to omit the IRB prompt from now on):
vowel("apple") #=> "elpp"
This is because
result = new[i] + result
prepends the character to the result string. To append it, we have to write
result = result + new[i]
Or even better, use the append method String#<<:
result << new[i]
Let's try it:
def vowel(str)
result = ""
new = str.chars
i = 0
while i < new.length
if new[i] != "a"
result << new[i]
end
i = i + 1
end
return result
end
vowel("apple") #=> "pple"
That looks good, "a" has been removed ("e" is still there, because you only check for "a").
Now for some refactoring.
Removing the explicit loop counter
Instead of a while loop with an explicit loop counter, it's more idiomatic to use something like Integer#times:
new.length.times do |i|
# ...
end
or Range#each:
(0...new.length).each do |i|
# ...
end
or Array#each_index:
new.each_index do |i|
# ...
end
Let's apply the latter:
def vowel(str)
result = ""
new = str.chars
new.each_index do |i|
if new[i] != "a"
result << new[i]
end
end
return result
end
Much better. We don't have to worry about initializing the loop counter (i = 0) or incrementing it (i = i + 1) any more.
Avoiding character indices
Instead of iterating over the character indices via each_index:
new.each_index do |i|
if new[i] != "a"
result << new[i]
end
end
we can iterate over the characters themselves using Array#each:
new.each do |char|
if char != "a"
result << char
end
end
Removing the character array
We don't even have to create the new character array. Remember the documentation for chars?
This is a shorthand for str.each_char.to_a.
String#each_char passes each character to the given block:
def vowel(str)
result = ""
str.each_char do |char|
if char != "a"
result << char
end
end
return result
end
The return keyword is optional. We could just write result instead of return result, because a method's return value is the last expression that was evaluated.
Removing the explicit string
Ruby even allows you to pass an object into the loop using Enumerator#with_object, thus eliminating the explicit result string:
def vowel(str)
str.each_char.with_object("") do |char, result|
if char != "a"
result << char
end
end
end
with_object passes "" into the block as result and returns it (after the characters have been appended within the block). It is also the last expression in the method, i.e. its return value.
You could also use if as a modifier, i.e.:
result << char if char != "a"
Alternatives
There are many different ways to remove characters from a string.
Another approach is to filter out the vowel characters using Enumerable#reject (it returns a new array containing the remaining characters) and then join the characters (see Nathan's answer for a version to remove all vowels):
def vowel(str)
str.each_char.reject { |char| char == "a" }.join
end
For basic operations like string manipulation however, Ruby usually already provides a method. Check out the other answers for built-in alternatives:
str.delete('aeiouAEIOU') as shown in Gagan Gami's answer
str.tr('aeiouAEIOU', '') as shown in Cary Swoveland's answer
str.gsub(/[aeiou]/i, '') as shown in Avinash Raj's answer
Naming things
Cary Swoveland pointed out that vowel is not the best name for your method. Choose the names for your methods, variables and classes carefully. It's desirable to have a short and succinct method name, but it should also communicate its intent.
vowel(str) obviously has something to do with vowels, but it's not clear what it is. Does it return a vowel or all vowels from str? Does it check whether str is a vowel or contains a vowel?
remove_vowels or delete_vowels would probably be a better choice.
Same for variables: new is an array of characters. Why not call it characters (or chars if space is an issue)?
Bottom line: read the fine manual and get to know your tools. Most of the time, an IRB session is all you need to debug your code.
I should use regex.
str.gsub(/[aeiou]/i, "")
> string= "This Is my sAmple tExt to removE vowels"
#=> "This Is my sAmple tExt to removE vowels"
> string.delete 'aeiouAEIOU'
#=> "Ths s my smpl txt t rmv vwls"
You can create a method like this:
def remove_vowel(str)
result = str.delete 'aeiouAEIOU'
return result
end
remove_vowel("Hello World, This is my sample text")
# output : "Hll Wrld, Ths s my smpl txt"
Live Demo
Assuming you're trying to learn about the basics of programming, rather than finding the quickest one-liner to do this (which would be to use a regular expression as Avinash has said), you have a number of problems with your code you need to change.
new = str.split(" ")
This line is likely the culprit, because it splits the string based on spaces. So your input string would have to be "a p p l e" to have the effect you're looking for.
new = str.split("")
You should also remove the duplicate i = i+1 once you've changed that.
As others have already identified the problems with the OP's code, I will merely suggest an alternative; namely, you could use String#tr:
"Now is the time for all good people...".tr('aeiouAEIOU', '')
#=> "Nw s th tm fr ll gd ppl..."
If regex is not allowed, you can do it this way:
def remove_vowels(string)
string.split("").delete_if { |letter| %w[a e i o u].include? letter }.join
end
Say that we want to count the number of words in a document. I know we can do the following:
text.each_line(){ |line| totalWords = totalWords + line.split.size }
Say, that I just want to add some exceptions, such that, I don't want to count the following as words:
(1) numbers
(2) standalone letters
(3) email addresses
How can we do that?
Thanks.
You can wrap this up pretty neatly:
text.each_line do |line|
total_words += line.split.reject do |word|
word.match(/\A(\d+|\w|\S*\#\S+\.\S+)\z/)
end.length
end
Roughly speaking that defines an approximate email address.
Remember Ruby strongly encourages the use of variables with names like total_words and not totalWords.
assuming you can represent all the exceptions in a single regular expression regex_variable, you could do:
text.each_line(){ |line| totalWords = totalWords + line.split.count {|wrd| wrd !~ regex_variable }
your regular expression could look something like:
regex_variable = /\d.|^[a-z]{1}$|\A([^#\s]+)#((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})\Z/i
I don't claim to be a regex expert, so you may want to double check that, particularly the email validation part
In addition to the other answers, a little gem hunting came up with this:
WordsCounted Gem
Get the following data from any string or readable file:
Word count
Unique word count
Word density
Character count
Average characters per word
A hash map of words and the number of times they occur
A hash map of words and their lengths
The longest word(s) and its length
The most occurring word(s) and its number of occurrences.
Count invividual strings for occurrences.
A flexible way to exclude words (or anything) from the count. You can pass a string, a regexp, an array, or a lambda.
Customisable criteria. Pass your own regexp rules to split strings if you prefer. The default regexp has two features:
Filters special characters but respects hyphens and apostrophes.
Plays nicely with diacritics (UTF and unicode characters): "São Paulo" is treated as ["São", "Paulo"] and not ["S", "", "o", "Paulo"].
Opens and reads files. Pass in a file path or a url instead of a string.
Have you ever started answering a question and found yourself wandering, exploring interesting, but tangential issues, or concepts you didn't fully understand? That's what happened to me here. Perhaps some of the ideas might prove useful in other settings, if not for the problem at hand.
For readability, we might define some helpers in the class String, but to avoid contamination, I'll use Refinements.
Code
module StringHelpers
refine String do
def count_words
remove_punctuation.split.count { |w|
!(w.is_number? || w.size == 1 || w.is_email_address?) }
end
def remove_punctuation
gsub(/[.!?,;:)](?:\s|$)|(?:^|\s)\(|\-|\n/,' ')
end
def is_number?
self =~ /\A-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?\z/
end
def is_email_address?
include?('#') # for testing only
end
end
end
module CountWords
using StringHelpers
def self.count_words_in_file(fname)
IO.foreach(fname).reduce(0) { |t,l| t+l.count_words }
end
end
Note that using must be in a module (possibly a class). It does not work in main, presumably because that would make the methods available in the class self.class #=> Object, which would defeat the purpose of Refinements. (Readers: please correct me if I'm wrong about the reason using must be in a module.)
Example
Let's first informally check that the helpers are working correctly:
module CheckHelpers
using StringHelpers
s = "You can reach my dog, a 10-year-old golden, at fido#dogs.org."
p s = s.remove_punctuation
#=> "You can reach my dog a 10 year old golden at fido#dogs.org."
p words = s.split
#=> ["You", "can", "reach", "my", "dog", "a", "10",
# "year", "old", "golden", "at", "fido#dogs.org."]
p '123'.is_number? #=> 0
p '-123'.is_number? #=> 0
p '1.23'.is_number? #=> 0
p '123.'.is_number? #=> nil
p "fido#dogs.org".is_email_address? #=> true
p "fido(at)dogs.org".is_email_address? #=> false
p s.count_words #=> 9 (`'a'`, `'10'` and "fido#dogs.org" excluded)
s = "My cat, who has 4 lives remaining, is at abbie(at)felines.org."
p s = s.remove_punctuation
p s.count_words
end
All looks OK. Next, put I'll put some text in a file:
FName = "pets"
text =<<_
My cat, who has 4 lives remaining, is at abbie(at)felines.org.
You can reach my dog, a 10-year-old golden, at fido#dogs.org.
_
File.write(FName, text)
#=> 125
and confirm the file contents:
File.read(FName)
#=> "My cat, who has 4 lives remaining, is at abbie(at)felines.org.\n
# You can reach my dog, a 10-year-old golden, at fido#dogs.org.\n"
Now, count the words:
CountWords.count_words_in_file(FName)
#=> 18 (9 in ech line)
Note that there is at least one problem with the removal of punctuation. It has to do with the hyphen. Any idea what that might be?
Something like...?
def is_countable(word)
return false if word.size < 2
return false if word ~= /^[0-9]+$/
return false if is_an_email_address(word) # you need a gem for this...
return true
end
wordCount = text.split().inject(0) {|count,word| count += 1 if is_countable(word) }
Or, since I am jumping to the conclusion that you can just split your entire text into an array with split(), you might need:
wordCount = 0
text.each_line do |line|
line.split.each{|word| wordCount += 1 if is_countable(word) }
end
I'd like to count the number of times a set of words appear in each paragraph in a text file. I am able to count the number of times a set of words appears in an entire text.
It has been suggested to me that my code is really buggy, so I'll just ask what I would like to do, and if you want, you can look at the code I have at the bottom.
So, given that "frequency_count.txt" has the words "apple pear grape melon kiwi" in it, I want to know how often "apple" shows up in each paragraph of a separate file "test_essay.txt", how often pear shows up, etc., and then for these numbers to be printed out in a series of lines of numbers, each corresponding to a paragraph.
For instance:
apple, pear, grape, melon, kiwi
3,5,2,7,8
2,3,1,6,7
5,6,8,2,3
Where each line corresponds to one of the paragraphs.
I am very, very new to Ruby, so thank you for your patience.
output_file = '/Users/yirenlu/Quora-Personal-Analytics/weka_input6.csv'
o = File.open(output_file, "r+")
common_words = '/Users/yirenlu/Quora-Personal-Analytics/frequency_count.txt'
c = File.open(common_words, "r")
c.each_line{|$line1|
words1 = $line1.split
words1.each{|w1|
the_file = '/Users/yirenlu/Quora-Personal-Analytics/test_essay.txt'
f = File.open(the_file, "r")
rows = File.readlines("/Users/yirenlu/Quora-Personal-Analytics/test_essay.txt")
text = rows.join
paragraph = text.split(/\n\n/)
paragraph.each{|p|
h = Hash.new
puts "this is each paragraph"
p.each_line{|line|
puts "this is each line"
words = line.split
words.each{|w|
if w1 == w
if h.has_key?(w)
h[w1] = h[w1] + 1
else
h[w1] = 1
end
$x = h[w1]
end
}
}
o.print "#{$x},"
}
}
o.print "\n"
o.print "#{$line1}"
}
If you're used to PHP or Perl you may be under the impression that a variable like $line1 is local, but this is a global. Use of them is highly discouraged and the number of instances where they are strictly required is very short. In most cases you can just omit the $ and use variables that way with proper scoping.
This example also suffers from nearly unreadable indentation, though perhaps that was an artifact of the cut-and-paste procedure.
Generally what you want for counters is to create a hash with a default of zero, then add to that as required:
# Create a hash where the default values for each key is 0
counter = Hash.new(0)
# Add to the counters where required
counter['foo'] += 1
counter['bar'] += 2
puts counter['foo']
# => 1
puts counter['baz']
# => 0
You basically have what you need, but everything is all muddled and just needs to be organized better.
Here are two one-liners to calculate frequencies of words in a string.
The first one is a bit easier to understand, but it's less effective:
txt.scan(/\w+/).group_by{|word| word.downcase}.map{|k,v| [k, v.size]}
# => [['word1', 1], ['word2', 5], ...]
The second solution is:
txt.scan(/\w+/).inject(Hash.new(0)) { |hash, w| hash[w.downcase] += 1; hash}
# => {'word1' => 1, 'word2' => 5, ...}
This could be shorter and easier to read if you use:
The CSV library.
A more functional approach using map and blocks.
require 'csv'
common_words = %w(apple pear grape melon kiwi)
text = File.open("test_essay.txt").read
def word_frequency(words, text)
words.map { |word| text.scan(/\b#{word}\b/).length }
end
CSV.open("file.csv", "wb") do |csv|
paragraphs = text.split /\n\n/
paragraphs.each do |para|
csv << word_frequency(common_words, para)
end
end
Note this is currently case-sensitive but it's a minor adjustment if you want case-insensitivity.
Here's an alternate answer, which is has been tweaked for conciseness (though not as easy to read as my other answer).
require 'csv'
words = %w(apple pear grape melon kiwi)
text = File.open("test_essay.txt").read
CSV.open("file.csv", "wb") do |csv|
text.split(/\n\n/).map {|p| csv << words.map {|w| p.scan(/\b#{w}\b/).length}}
end
I prefer the slightly longer but more self-documenting code, but it's fun to see how small it can get.
What about this:
# Create an array of regexes to be used in `scan' in the loop.
# `\b' makes sure that `barfoobar' does not match `bar' or `foo'.
p word_list = File.open("frequency_count.txt"){|io| io.read.scan(/\w+/)}.map{|w| /\b#{w}\b/}
File.open("test_essay.txt") do |io|
loop do
# Add lines to `paragraph' as long as there is a continuous line
paragraph = ""
# A `l.chomp.empty?' becomes true at paragraph border
while l = io.gets and !l.chomp.empty?
paragraph << l
end
p word_list.map{|re| paragraph.scan(re).length}
# The end of file has been reached when `l == nil'
break unless l
end
end
To count how many times one word appears in a text:
text = "word aaa word word word bbb ccc ccc"
text.scan(/\w+/).count("word") # => 4
To count a set of words:
text = "word aaa word word word bbb ccc ccc"
wlist = text.scan(/\w+/)
wset = ["word", "ccc"]
result = {}
wset.each {|word| result[word] = wlist.count(word) }
result # => {"word" => 4, "ccc" => 2}
result["ccc"] # => 2