Re: Accelerate C++ Exercise 4-5 Questions

From:
"Bo Persson" <bop@gmb.dk>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 7 Apr 2009 13:54:38 CST
Message-ID:
<741dp7F11ec10U1@mid.individual.net>
bwaichu@yahoo.com wrote:

This time I decided to tackle the problem of reading input into a
vector, counting the number of words entered, and counting the
number of time each word was entered.

My code works, but I'm not sure about cin and the << operator
behavior. I enter a complete sentence followed by ^D (EOF) on BSD.
On windows, it's a little trickier to get the EOF with ^Z to
register. I need to enter it more than once for some reason. What
does the C++ specification say about cin behavior, or this behavior
undefined?


I haven't seen this behavior on Windows. You might have to press Enter
to have your input processed.

cin reads one word at a time, rather than the complete line. The
good news is that this makes it easier to split words, so I can
populate my vector. However, this becomes very inefficient in
terms of the number of calls I need to make. Is there a better C++
approach?


Are you in a hurry? :-)

It is always better to have the program work correctly, rather than
fast. If needed, you can look into the execution speed later, or buy a
bigger computer.

If you want to get one line at a time, there is a function for that -
getline.

Also, I'm iterating through all most the entire vector each time
before adding a new word. Does the STL provide a better way to look
up strings?


There is a better container for mappning a string to an int
(std::map), but you don't know about that until chapter 7.2. :-)

Are there string search functions within the STL such
as Boyer-Moore, or do I need to write my own implementation? I do
enjoy the operator overloading in C++.


There are string search functions, but perhaps not Boyer-Moore.

Anyway, please provide me some feedback.

Thanks,

Brian

Here's my code:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

struct Words {

string word;
int count;
};

istream&
read(istream& in, Words& record, vector<Words>& wVec) {


I wouldn't use a parameter for the record, as it seems to used only
inside this function. You could have a local variable for that.

      bool eflag = 0;


I have to look through the code to see what an eflag could be. Perhaps
you could use a more descriptive name?

Also, the bool values are true and false, not 0 and 1.

      // add record
      if (in >> record.word) {

        if (wVec.size() == 0 ) {
          record.count = 1;
  wVec.push_back(record);
        }


This special case is not really needed, as the for loop below will
terminate immediately on an empty vector - begin() equals end().

        else {

            // iterate through all the words all ready pushed into
the vector
    for (vector<Words>::iterator i = wVec.begin();
         i != wVec.end(); ++i) {

// test to see if the word has all ready been entered
if (i->word == record.word) {
   i->count += 1;
   eflag = 1;
   break;
}
    }
    if (eflag == 0) {
                record.count = 1;
wVec.push_back(record);
    }
      }
    }
    return in;
}

int
main() {

vector<Words> wVec;
Words record;
int wc = 0;

while (read(cin,record, wVec)) {
    ++wc;
}


It is not at all obvious that the while loop terminates when cin
reaches end-of-file (or some error?). Could you make this more
readable.

I also don't really like wc as a variable name. How do I know that it
is a word count, and not the number of wide characters or wind
changes?

cout << "number of words entered: " << wc << endl;

// iterate through the vector and display the word and its count
for (vector<Words>::iterator i = wVec.begin();
         i != wVec.end(); ++i) {

    cout << i->word << " " << i->count << endl;
}

return 0;
}


Bo Persson

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