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Brian_Alexander
Asked: 2020-05-08 10:40:09 +0800 CST 2020-05-08 10:40:09 +0800 CST

How can I count number of words in a .txt file in ruby?

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It turns out that I need to know how many words a text file has, I have already opened it correctly and tried the method length, but it gives me the number of lines in the file.

I tried to make a gsubto the variable that stores the file but it throws me an error.

I thought I'd try count, but I'm still seeing how it's done.

ruby

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The complicated thing is how you identify a word, as it can vary depending on your object, language, context, etc. A simple (but not perfect) way can be: a word is all text that is between two spaces (space, line break, tab, etc.) .

    For the above definition then you could do something like this:

    File.read(nombre_de_archivo)   # lee el contenido del archivo 
    .split(/[[:space:]]/)      # divide el texto en palabras y crea un arreglo
    .reject(&:empty?)          # elimina los elementos del arreglo sin texto
    .size                      # cuenta los elementos (palabras) del arreglo

    Example file (test.txt):

    Uno, dos, tres
cuatro, cinco, seis
siete, ocho y nueve
    • Added a space at the end of each line to understand the usage of reject(&:empty?).

    Step-by-step execution:

    File.read("prueba.txt")      #=> "Uno, dos, tres \n" + "cuatro, cinco, seis \n" + "siete, ocho y nueve\n"
    .split(/[[:space:]]/)    #=> ["Uno,", "dos,", "tres", "", "cuatro,", "cinco,", "seis", "", "siete,", "ocho", "y", "nueve"]
    .reject(&:empty?)        #=> ["Uno,", "dos,", "tres", "cuatro,", "cinco,", "seis", "siete,", "ocho", "y", "nueve"]
    .size                    #=> 10
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