CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyregex
Simplicity
Simplicity

Reputation: 48916

Hash and values

I came across this Ruby script:

frequency = Hash.new(0)
...
...
file.read.downcase.scan(/\b[a-z]{4,20}\b/){|word| frequency[word] =
frequency[word]+1}

The point I couldn't understand is frequency[word] = frequency[word]+1

Wouldn't frequency[word] give me the word matched? How can we add it to 1?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Alex Netkachov
Alex Netkachov

Reputation: 13532

frequency is defined as a hash with 0 as default value. So when frequency[word] is invoked for the word that wasn't recorded before it returns 0.

The code seems to count the different words in the text.

When it finishes, the frequency will contain words as keys and number of times the particular word appears in the sentence as values.

You can play with it here: http://rubyfiddle.com/riddles/519da

Upvotes: 6

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