I suspected that those might be a problem.
I’ve always had trouble with looping through text one character at a time.
I’ve tried making input an array, as well as just a variable. Either way, I can’t get it to work.
The same for letters, I can’t loop through each individual character in the keys.
I’ve tried both type of for loops:
for i in "${!letters[@]}"
for (( i=0; i < ${!letters[@]}; i++ ))
Any hint would be appreciated
My suggestion here would be
Making those two changes should make things simpler.
Can you figure out how to loop over the individual characters in a single string/variable?
Ok, so this works, but the only thing is that I have to enter the input with spaces between each character or it fails: t e s t instead of test. Is there a way to allow the input to be entered naturally?
#!/bin/bash
declare -A letters
letters["a"]=1
letters["b"]=3
letters["c"]=3
letters["d"]=2
letters["e"]=1
letters["f"]=4
letters["g"]=2
letters["h"]=4
letters["i"]=1
letters["j"]=8
letters["k"]=5
letters["l"]=1
letters["m"]=3
letters["n"]=1
letters["o"]=1
letters["p"]=3
letters["q"]=10
letters["r"]=1
letters["s"]=1
letters["t"]=1
letters["u"]=1
letters["v"]=4
letters["w"]=4
letters["x"]=8
letters["y"]=4
letters["z"]=10
counter=0
i=0
#set -x
echo "Enter a letter: "
read input
for x in $input
do
for i in "${!letters[@]}"
do
if [[ "$x" == "$i" ]]
then
(( counter+=${letters[$i]} ))
break
fi
done
done
echo "counter is: $counter"
You’re splitting the input up into words. Can you find a way to iterate over the characters of a string? Given, string="Hello world", for each character, echo "<$character>". The output should be:
<H>
<e>
<l>
<l>
<l>
<o>
< >
<W>
<o>
...
Can you work that out? Or do you need a hint?
I’ve tried:
echo "Enter a letter/word: "
read -r input
for x in input
do
echo "${input:x:1}"
done
Using “test” as input, it only prints t, and doesn’t keep looping.
I also tried:
`for (( x=0; x < $input; x++ ))`
do
echo "$x"
done
That doesn’t get past the for statement:
Enter a letter/word:
test
+ (( x=0 ))
+ (( x < test ))
Probably because 0 can’t be less than t
So I’ll take that hint if you would.
This iterates over the string "input". for x in $input would expand $input and split it into words, then iterate over those words. Neither of those gives you the characters.
If x were a number, this would give you the xth character of "$input", which would allow you to print one character at a time!
If $input were the length of the input, this would give you a loop where x iterates over the numbers 0 to the length of the input. Combined with echo "${input:x:1}", that would echo out each character, one by one. So this is fairly close:
for (( x=0; x < $input; x++ )); do
echo "${input:x:1}"
done
The only thing that needs fixing here is that you’re using the input string as the upper limit where that ought to be the length of the input, "${#input}". Making that change, this code should print out the characters of the input, one by one.
for (( x=0; x < ${#input}; x++ )); do
echo "${input:x:1}"
done
A similar loop can be used to tally up the score of the characters of a string.
Let me know if I can explain anything else and/or if the above unblocks you.
Thanks, that all makes sense.
The problem I’m having is that if I change $input to ${#input}, it breaks the if comparison, because now x is a number instead of a letter.
I tried adding another nested for loop to make up for this:
counter=0
z=0
temp=0
echo "Enter a letter/word: "
read -r input
#set -x
for (( x=0; x < ${#input}; x++ ))
do
for y in $input
do
temp="${input:y:1}"
for z in "${!letters[@]}"
do
if [[ "$temp" == "$z" ]]
then
(( counter+=${letters[$z]} ))
break
fi
done
done
done
echo "counter is: $counter"
The second for loop for y in $input doesn’t iterate past the first character. Using the word cabbage as a test, it assigns the character c to temp, but doesn’t go any further.
I’ve probably made it more complex than it needs to be, and I don’t really understand the way those nested loops move.
Well… yes. That’s exactly what I suggested. Using x as the character position to get to the xth character.
If you’re looping over x characters, one character at a time, you don’t need an inner loop. You only need one loop to iterate over x characters. x gives you the offset/index/position and you use x to get the xth character.
From my last response, you can use the following to print one character of input at a time.
You should use that same logic to get the xth character, but check its Scrabble value instead of printing it.
Got it.
Here is the finished product:
#!/bin/bash
declare -A letters
letters["a"]=1
letters["b"]=3
letters["c"]=3
letters["d"]=2
letters["e"]=1
letters["f"]=4
letters["g"]=2
letters["h"]=4
letters["i"]=1
letters["j"]=8
letters["k"]=5
letters["l"]=1
letters["m"]=3
letters["n"]=1
letters["o"]=1
letters["p"]=3
letters["q"]=10
letters["r"]=1
letters["s"]=1
letters["t"]=1
letters["u"]=1
letters["v"]=4
letters["w"]=4
letters["x"]=8
letters["y"]=4
letters["z"]=10
counter=0
echo "Enter a letter/word: "
read -r input
#set -x
for (( x=0; x < ${#input}; x++ ))
do
temp="${input:x:1}"
for z in "${!letters[@]}"
do
if [[ "$temp" == "$z" ]]
then
(( counter+=${letters[$z]} ))
break
fi
done
done
echo "scrabble score is: $counter"
As always, thanks.
Well solved!
Note, the purpose of an associative array is that you can look up a value in it without needing to loop.