count words in a line

benlaw has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: count words in a line by tadman (Prior) on Jun 06, 2002 at 16:01 UTC
Question A: How many words are there on a line? `my $count = () = /\w+/g;` Question B: How many 'perlmonk' words are there on a line? `my $count = () = /\bperlmonk\b/g;` Question C: How many "perlmonk" spaced words are there on a line? `my $regex = join ('\s*', split(//, 'perlmonk')); my $count = () = /$regex/g;` [download] In the future, please use more capitals and less superfluous punctuation. These postings, as I'm sure you're well aware, are archived for future reference. A small effort to maintain some level of quality helps everyone. As jeffa says in How (Not) To Ask A Question, the shift keys are there for a reason.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: count words in a line by marvell (Pilgrim) on Jun 06, 2002 at 16:02 UTC
We build the regex from the word using \s* in between the letters. `my $word = "perlmonk"; my $re = join('\s*',$word =~ /\w/g); my $qre = qr/$re/; while (<DATA>) { my $count = () = /$qre/g; print "$count == $_"; } __DATA__ perlmonk perlmonk perlmonk perl m onk p erlmonk per lm onk per lm onk` [download] Updated: actually answered question this time. -- Steve Marvell	[reply] [d/l]
Re: count words in a line by jmcnamara (Monsignor) on Jun 06, 2002 at 16:23 UTC
To match arbitrary words use `\w+` instead of "perlmonk": `#!/usr/bin/perl -wl use strict; my $line1 = "perlmonk perlmonk perlmonk"; my $count1 = () = $line1 =~ /perlmonk/g; my $line2 = "perl m onk p erlmonk per lm onk"; # Remove the spaces and count as before $line2 =~ s/ //g; my $count2 = () = $line2 =~ /perlmonk/g; print for $count1, $count2; __END__ Prints: 3 3` [download] -- John.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: count words in a line by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jun 06, 2002 at 19:42 UTC
Even the last one is simpler than the others here would suggest. You can simply remove all whitespace first: `$line =~ s/\s+//g;` After that, you can count the occurences with any of the other methods proposed here. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: count words in a line by Anonymous Monk on Jun 06, 2002 at 16:12 UTC
Sure you can. If your data is nice and normal like in the first example you can do something like this. `@sentence = split /\s/,"perlmonk perlmonk perlmonk "; $numWords = @sentence;` [download] to count the number of occurrences of perlmonk and not other words you could use the same idea but with a regular expression. I will leave it to you to figure it out. This is a clunky way to do it.... `@sentence = split /\s/,"perlmonk perlmonk perlmonk and some other wor +ds that are not perlmonk"; foreach $word (@sentence) { if ( $word =~/perlmonk/) { $numOccur++; } }` [download] The last one would be more tricky, but it can be done with a fairly easy regxp... something along the lines of `/p\se\s.....` should do the trick Good luck. Disclamer: all code untested and off the top of my head.	[reply] [d/l] [select]