An obvious but NOT necessarily good solution

Post #183,650 by ben_tilly 11/8/04 10:31:24 PM Reply	An obvious but NOT necessarily good solution Consider the sentence, This sentence, right here, doesn't work well with Todd's algorithm. With Todd's algorithm we get the following, .algorithm s'Todd with well work t'doesn ,here right ,sentence This The output that I would expect (Arkadiy's algorithm would give it to you) is something more like, algorithm s, Todd with, well'work t doesn here right'sentence This. The best possible output would be, algorithm Todd's, with well, work doesn't here right sentence This. I hope that questioning the spec would give brownie points. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #183,667 by tuberculosis 11/8/04 11:36:56 PM Reply	It gives the results I expect but your application of it I find odd. This sentence, right here, doesn't work well with Todd's algorithm. .algorithm s'Todd with well work t'doesn ,here right ,sentence This I don't think an appostrophe counts as a word boundary - either in a contraction or when using a possessive. So I don't understand how reversing Todd's gets you s'Todd or doesn't gets you t'doesn. As for the placement of punctuation - its kind of a fuzzy area I suppose and nobody is wrong as the desired behavior is left unspecified. The test string I had in mind was simpler - along the lines of "I was a bad boy". You can argue either result is correct. My gut is to treat sentence separators (commas, periods, etc) as individual words. You seem to have a different idea about leaving them between words 3 and 4 even if the original words 3 and 4 are now 9 and 8. I hope that questioning the spec would give brownie points. Pretty much any evidence of coherent thought gives brownie points. Failing completely but providing a view onto decent thought processes can still carry the day around here. We're just trying to find critical thinkers with decent grounding in CS that don't view all that "theoretical stuff" as useless. This is apparently pretty hard to find. "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #183,753 by ben_tilly 11/9/04 11:24:29 AM Reply	I was assuming... the most naive definition of "word" - a string of word characters. In my experience people tend to start with that and then go from there. You're right that the spec did not specify what to do with the non-word characters. But when I hear, "Do this", my first question is, "What other side-effects are OK?" My default assumption tends to be "none" unless I find out otherwise. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)

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