43 — Text stats: letters, words, and the longest one

What comes out of a file is one piece of text. There are usually three things you want from it — how long it is, how many words, and which word is the longest.

A program that writes files does not run on the site.

#Steps

1. Save it and read it back, exactly as in guide 37:

   set text to the weather is very good today
   write text to "memo.txt"
   read "memo.txt" into memo
   show memo
   

   copyrun it →

2. Letters and words are two sentences:

   set memo to the weather is very good today
   show the length of memo
   set words to memo split by space
   show how many words
   

   copyrun it →

   30 and 6.

3. The longest word is found by comparing one at a time. Keep the best so far in a name and replace it when something longer turns up:

   set words to list of the, weather, is, good
   set longest to the first of words
   set best to the length of longest
   for each word in words
       set size to the length of word
       if size is greater than best
           set longest to word
           set best to size
       end
   end
   show longest
   

   copyrun it →

   You get weather. The lengths go into names first — a reading cannot be written straight into the right-hand side of a comparison.

4. The whole thing:

   set text to the weather is very good today
   write text to "memo.txt"
   read "memo.txt" into memo
   show the length of memo
   set words to memo split by space
   show how many words
   set longest to the first of words
   set best to the length of longest
   for each word in words
       set size to the length of word
       if size is greater than best
           set longest to word
           set best to size
       end
   end
   show longest
   show best
   

   copyrun it →

#Try it yourself

Find the shortest word too — change is greater than to is less than. Then count the lines: set lines to memo split by line, then show how many lines.

#What you learned

• What comes out of a file is one piece of text; splitting it makes a list.
• the length of is letters; how many on the split list is words.
• The longest is found by keeping the best so far and comparing one at a time.
• A reading goes into a name before it can be compared against.