Count the number of each letter

[civilcalc]

Ok so I have some data, in this instance colours. I want to be able to count how many letter A's there are, then B's and so on.....

Amber

Azure

Beige

Black

Blond

Brass

Brown

Is there a simple way of doing this?

[Melba23]

civilcalc,

This is one way to do it:

#include <Array.au3>

$sData = "Amber" & @CRLF & _
         "Azure" & @CRLF & _
         "Beige" & @CRLF & _
         "Black" & @CRLF & _
         "Blond" & @CRLF & _
         "Brass" & @CRLF & _
         "Brown"

Global $aLetters[26][2]

For $i = 0 To 25
    $aLetters[$i][0] = Chr(65 + $i)
    StringRegExpReplace($sData, Chr(65 + $i), "")
    $aLetters[$i][1] = @extended
    StringRegExpReplace($sData, Chr(97 + $i), "")
    $aLetters[$i][1] += @extended
Next

_ArrayDisplay($aLetters)

M23

[PsaltyDS]

This is one way to do it:

Faster:

#include <Array.au3>

$sData = "Amber" & @CRLF & _
         "Azure" & @CRLF & _
         "Beige" & @CRLF & _
         "Black" & @CRLF & _
         "Blond" & @CRLF & _
         "Brass" & @CRLF & _
         "Brown"

Global $aLetters[26]

$iTimer = TimerInit()
$aData = StringSplit($sData, "")
For $n = 1 To UBound($aData) - 1
    $iChar = Asc($aData[$n]) - 65
    If $iChar >= 32 Then $iChar -= 32
    If ($iChar < 0) Or ($iChar > 25) Then ContinueLoop
    $aLetters[$iChar] += 1
Next
$iTimer = TimerDiff($iTimer)
_ArrayDisplay($aLetters, "Time = " & Round($iTimer / 1000, 3) & "sec")

Edited March 9, 2010 by PsaltyDS

[Fulano]

Not that much faster, but you can cut out one line:

#include <Array.au3>

$sData = "Amber" & @CRLF & _
        "Azure" & @CRLF & _
        "Beige" & @CRLF & _
        "Black" & @CRLF & _
        "Blond" & @CRLF & _
        "Brass" & @CRLF & _
        "Brown"

Global $aLetters[26]

$iTimer = TimerInit()
$aData = StringSplit($sData, "")
For $n = 1 To UBound($aData) - 1
    $iChar = Asc($aData[$n]) - 65
    If $iChar >= 32 Then $iChar -= 32
    If $iChar >= 0 And $iChar < 26 Then $aLetters[$iChar] += 1
Next
$iTimer = TimerDiff($iTimer)
_ArrayDisplay($aLetters, "Time = " & Round($iTimer / 1000, 3) & "sec")

Also, the majority of punctuation marks, and the numbers are below the range of letters, with the And the if statement can 'short circuit' and avoid having the check $iChar < 26, with the Or statement it will check both every time. Also shouldn't make that big of a difference, unless you are counting a couple of million lines of text

[dani]

Totally unrelated, forgive me

In Ruby:

words = %w[Amber Azure Beige Black Blond Brass Brown].map(&:downcase) # Downcase to prevent different counts for a and A, b and B etc.

count = Hash[('a'..'z').map { |char| [char, 0] }]                     # Hash that holds a through z mapped to the value 0

words.each { |word| word.each_char { |char| count[char] += 1 } }      # Counts every character and updates the Hash

count.sort.each { |letter, count| puts "#{letter}: #{count}" }        # Displays Hash

Edited March 9, 2010 by dani

[Yoriz]

Couple more ways and also pretty fast

p.s. Try the 2nd version on a lot of text and it is very fast

$sData = "Amber" & @CRLF & _
        "Azure" & @CRLF & _
        "Beige" & @CRLF & _
        "Black" & @CRLF & _
        "Blond" & @CRLF & _
        "Brass" & @CRLF & _
        "Brown"

Global $aLetters[26]

$iTimer3 = TimerInit()
$sData = StringStripWS($sData,8)
$iStringLen = stringlen($sData)
$iChar = 65
Do
    $sData = StringReplace($sData,Chr($iChar),"")
    $iNewStringLen = stringlen($sData)

    $aLetters[$iChar-65] = Chr($iChar) & " - " & $iStringLen-$iNewStringLen
    $iStringLen = $iNewStringLen
    $iChar +=1
until Not $iStringLen
$iTimer3 = TimerDiff($iTimer3)
_ArrayDisplay($aLetters, "Time = " & Round($iTimer3 / 1000, 5) & "sec")

$sData = "Amber" & @CRLF & _
        "Azure" & @CRLF & _
        "Beige" & @CRLF & _
        "Black" & @CRLF & _
        "Blond" & @CRLF & _
        "Brass" & @CRLF & _
        "Brown"

Global $aLetters[26]
Global $aStrings[26] = ["e","t","a","o","i","n","s","r","h","l","d","c","u", _
"m","f","p","g","w","y","b","v","k","x","j","q","z"] ; supposed frequency order

$iTimer4 = TimerInit()
$sData = StringStripWS($sData,8)
$iStringLen = stringlen($sData)
$iChar = 0
Do
    $sData = StringReplace($sData,$aStrings[$iChar],"")
    $iNewStringLen = stringlen($sData)
    $aLetters[$iChar] = $aStrings[$iChar] & " - " & $iStringLen-$iNewStringLen
    $iStringLen = $iNewStringLen
    $iChar +=1
until Not $iStringLen
$iTimer4 = TimerDiff($iTimer4)
_ArrayDisplay($aLetters, "Time = " & Round($iTimer4 / 1000, 5) & "sec")

Edited March 9, 2010 by Yoriz