count the highest consecutive occurrence of a string in Python

Question

How can I find the maximum number of occurrences of a string in python? for example if string s is :

s="**hellohellohello**applefruitcat**hellohello**lionlizard**hellohellohellohello**"

and I'm looking for the max number of consecutive "hello" this should return 4 since the max number of consecutive occurrence of hello is 4

I came up with a code to test the find function and surprisingly it gives me 4 which is the maximum number of consecutive occurrence I also tried different strings and it gave me the correct maximum. What I don't understand here is how is it returning the max number of occurrences, if no max function is used? I thought it would return how many times hello was found.

this is the code:

for i in range(len(s)):
if s.find('hello' * i) != -1:
    x = i

When i is varing,it finds ("hello"*i)....as an example,if i=3,it finds "hellohellohello" from the string.If it found, s.find('hello' * i) return the position of it(>0).... — Janith
– Janith, Commented Dec 1, 2020 at 9:09

Mureinik · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-01 08:59:22Z

1

This snippet loops over consecutive concatenated "hello"s. It first checks if there's a "hello" in the string, then "hellohello", etc, until it fails. The longest sequence that was there is the max number of consecutive "hello"s.

answered Dec 1, 2020 at 8:59

Mureinik

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2 Comments

addicted_programmer Over a year ago

so basically this part : ('hello' * i) != -1 keeps checking until it finds the longest sequences and returns it? I was confused because I thought it would count all the "hellos" in the string

Mureinik Over a year ago

Note the * i - in each iteration it looks for hello concatenated i times, until it can't find one (and -1 is returned).

John Deo · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-01 09:09:12Z

0

The code loops over the length of the string trying to find 'hello' then 'hellohello' and so on. It will set x to the current value of i if it found that many repetitions.

It will still search for 'hello'*5 and 'hello'*6 in your case but won't find it in the string thus leaving x to the last value of i it could actually find.

A slightly better version would be:

for i in range(len(s)/len('hello')):
  if s.find('hello' * i) != -1:
    x = i

answered Dec 1, 2020 at 9:09

John Deo

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