From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-06-22T09:56:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Histogram-type Data

On Jun 21, 2005, at 5:50 PM, Charles L. Snyder wrote:

> Hi,
>  I have a text-parsing question -
>
> array1 = ["Joe lives in France", "Sue goes to Japan", "Hiro walked  
> around
> France", "Bill moved to England"]
> a_countries = ["France", "Japan", "England", "Spain"]
>
> desired result is unique list (hash table)  of all countries  
> mentioned in
> the sentences in array1, with frequency of occurence - eg,
>
> France        2
> Japan         1
> England       1
> Spain            0

See if this gives you some fresh ideas:

irb(main):001:0> array1 = ["Joe lives in France", "Sue goes to  
Japan", "Hiro walked around France", "Bill moved to England"]
=> ["Joe lives in France", "Sue goes to Japan", "Hiro walked around  
France", "Bill moved to England"]
irb(main):002:0> a_countries = ["France", "Japan", "England", "Spain"]
=> ["France", "Japan", "England", "Spain"]
irb(main):003:0> counts = Hash.new
=> {}
irb(main):004:0> a_countries.each { |c| counts[c] = array1.find_all  
{ |line| line =~ /\b#{c}\b/ }.size }
=> ["France", "Japan", "England", "Spain"]
irb(main):005:0> counts
=> {"Spain"=>0, "France"=>2, "Japan"=>1, "England"=>1}

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II