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Hi,
I am new to perl and am trying to count the number of instances of
unique strings in a file. The strings are like

s1\aaa s1\bbb s1\ccc s1\ddd s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\eee

Currently, I have no good way to count unique strings in the file.
This could be easily done using the multimap functionality in C++.

I read about associative arrays but they seem to be more like unique
key / value combination. Would you know how best could I count the
number of unique strings in a file. I am not looking for code, just a
pointer in the right directin.

Thanks for your help,
Kapil

In article <> , Kapil Khosla wrote:
> Hi,
> I am new to perl and am trying to count the number of instances of
> unique strings in a file. The strings are like
>
> s1\aaa s1\bbb s1\ccc s1\ddd s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\eee
>
> Currently, I have no good way to count unique strings in the file.
> This could be easily done using the multimap functionality in C++.
>
> I read about associative arrays but they seem to be more like unique
> key / value combination. Would you know how best could I count the
> number of unique strings in a file. I am not looking for code, just a
> pointer in the right directin.
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Kapil

Something like:

my %word_table = ();

for (all_words_in_file()) {
++$word_table{$_};
}

sub all_words_in_file {
# To be implemented
}

END {
for my $key (keys %word_table) {
print "$key occurs $word_table{$key} times.\n";
}
}

# Warning - the above is not tested.

--
Jim Cochrane;
[When responding by email, include the term non-spam in the subject line to
get through my spam filter.]

On Wed, 4 May 2004, Kapil Khosla wrote:

> Hi,
> I am new to perl and am trying to count the number of instances of
> unique strings in a file. The strings are like
>
> s1\aaa s1\bbb s1\ccc s1\ddd s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\aaa s1\eee
>
> Currently, I have no good way to count unique strings in the file.
> This could be easily done using the multimap functionality in C++.
>
> I read about associative arrays but they seem to be more like unique
> key / value combination. Would you know how best could I count the
> number of unique strings in a file. I am not looking for code, just a
> pointer in the right directin.
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Kapil

If you want a pointer to the right information, the FAQ is generally a
good place to start. In this case, the appropriate FAQ can be found by
typing
perldoc -q word-frequency
into your shell

And yes, associative arrays are indeed unique key/value combinations. In
your case, the keys would be the unique strings, and the values are the
number of times those strings have appeared.

Hope this helps,
Paul Lalli