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Processing a String One Word at a Time
CodeExpectedActual
class String
  def word_count
    frequencies = Hash.new(0)
    downcase.scan(/\w+/) { |word| frequencies[word] += 1 }
   return frequencies
  end
end
%{Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.}.word_count
 {"dogs"=>3, "dog"=>2} {"dogs"=>3, "dog"=>2} 
%{"I have no shame," I said.}.word_count
 {"no"=>1, "shame"=>1, "have"=>1, "said"=>1, "i"=>2} {"no"=>1, "shame"=>1, "have"=>1, "said"=>1, "i"=>2} 
/[0-9A-Za-z]/ 
Anything that's not whitespace is a word.
 






/[^\S]+/


Accept dashes and apostrophes as parts of words.








/[-'\w]+/


A pretty good heuristic for matching English words.








/(\w+([-'.]\w+)*/
class String
  def word_count
    frequencies = Hash.new(0)
    downcase.scan(/(\w+([-'.]\w+)*)/) { |word, ignore| frequencies[word] += 1 }
    return frequencies
  end
end
%{"That F.B.I. fella--he's quite the man-about-town."}.word_count

{"quite"=>1, "f.b.i"=>1, "the"=>1, "fella"=>1, "that"=>1,
{"quite"=>1, "f.b.i"=>1, "the"=>1, "fella"=>1, "that"=>1, "man-about-town"=>1, "he's"=>1}





french = "il \xc3\xa9tait une fois"
french.word_count

{"fois"=>1, "une"=>1, "tait"=>1, "il"=>1}
{"fois"=>1, "une"=>1, "tait"=>1, "il"=>1}





$KCODE='u'
french.word_count

{"fois"=>1, "une"=>1, "était"=>1, "il"=>1}
{"fois"=>1, "une"=>1, "était"=>1, "il"=>1}