Find particular words in a string, Python

Question

Create a function that, Given Two arguments: A text as a string and words as a set of strings, returns the number of words from the set, that are contained in the string.

Eg. count_words("How aresjfhdskfhskd you?", {"how", "are", "you", "hello"}) == 3

My Attempt:

import re
def count_words(text, words):
count = 0
for i in words:
    x = re.compile('.*'+i+'.*')
    if x.search(text):
        count +=1
return count

I assume this has been answered several times before, but i just could not find a relevant answer, so my apologies. Any help would be appreciated, thanks

Umm... since how and How are different strings, should the return value in your example be 2 instead of 3? — inspectorG4dget
– inspectorG4dget, Commented Aug 11, 2014 at 2:47

inspectorG4dget · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-11 02:48:40Z

8

def count_words(text, words):
    answer = 0
    for i in range(len(text)):
        if any(text[i:].startswith(word) for word in words):
            answer += 1
    return answer

If you want it to be insensitive to letter cases in the text:

def count_words(text, words):
    text = text.lower()
    answer = 0
    for i in range(len(text)):
        if any(text[i:].startswith(word) for word in words):
            answer += 1
    return answer

Of course, this can be done with a one-liner:

sum(text.count(word) for word in words)

answered Aug 11, 2014 at 2:48

inspectorG4dget

115k30 gold badges159 silver badges253 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Find particular words in a string, Python

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related