in reply to Re: Statistics from a txtfile
in thread Statistics from a txtfile

Hi There,
I have reviewed my code and have put it into some sort of structure.
It was to the problem that i had to:
ask for a filename
check file to see if its ms-dos file format
filename should be no longer than 8 characters and should begin with an _underscore or letter and should end with .txt not case sensitive
if not then it should add .txt
program should check whether file exists and not empty
should read the file by character and get the following statistics:
character count including whitespace the punctuation. number of words. paragraphs. lines and sentences. output details to a separate .txt file.
#!/usr/bin/perl

print("Please enter filename: ");
$filename = <STDIN>;
chomp ($filename);
if ($filename=~m/^[_a-zA-Z][^.]{1,7}\.txt$/)
open (READFILE, $filename)|| die "Failed to open $filename: $!";

my $filecontents;
{
    local undef $/;
    $filecontents = <READFILE>;
}

while (<READFILE>)

my @characters = ($filecontents =~m/\b/g);
my @words = ($filecontents =~m/\b\s/g);
my $wordcount = scalar @words;
my @paragraph =($
my @sentences = ($filecontents=~m/\.$/);


$CharCount{ $characters }++;
$wordcount{ $wordcount)++;
etc




close <READFILE>;

open(OUT, ">data1.txt") || die "data1.txt not open: $!";

output data here

close(OUT);

[download]
This is as far as I have got. Could you please elaborate on my coding further?
thankyou kindly

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Re^3: Statistics from a txtfile
by hangon (Deacon) on Dec 31, 2007 at 19:44 UTC

    Hi mbdc566021,

    Your code looks like it has just been cobbled together with snippets from various sources. This is OK, but don't be afraid to make changes and experiment with the code to see what happens. Here are a few points:

    • You do not need the while loop, which incidently is not completed anyway. In this context while(<READFILE>) is used to read the file line by line, but since you previously slurped the file, all of it has been read into the $filecontents variable. So a while loop is not needed here.
       
    • Incrementing a hash as suggested by apl: $CharCount{$characters}++ Only works for this inside a loop structure. You are trying to combine two different techniques.
       
    • You will need to experiment with your regexes to get the matches you want. If you have a copy of Programming Perl Study the chapter on Pattern Matching, and/or check the Tutorials section of Perlmonks. Also, see annotated code below: 
    # this matches each character once
$filecontents =~ m/./g;

# this version also puts a copy of each match into @characters
my @characters = $filecontents =~ m/./g;

# this counts the number of elements in @characters
my $CharCount = scalar @characters;

# to verify your regex is matching correctly
# this will print a list of each item counted:
for (@characters){
    print "$_ \n";
}

    [download]

    Good luck with your assignment.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Your code looks like it has just been cobbled together with snippets from various sources. This is OK, but don't be afraid to make changes and experiment with the code to see what happens.

      I personally believe it's far from being OK unless one

      • understands what that those snippets do, or tries to and upon failure asks for clarification, or
      • can safely take a black-box approach: e.g. I can't understand a given sub's algorithm, but I have a clear idea of what input it takes and what output does it spit out. (Or try to understand that and upon failure...)
      --
      If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.
[reply]
[d/l]

        I see your point blazar, and maybe I gave away a little too much. But since the OP is obviously a student, I was trying to encourage him (her?) to experiment so he will understand what the code does.

[reply]

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