Number Of Segments In A String
To solve this coding challenge, we need to determine the number of segments in a given string. A segment is defined as a contiguous sequence of non-space characters. For example, in the string "Hello, my name is John," the segments are ["Hello,", "my", "name", "is", "John"], leading to a total of 5 segments.
function simplifies handling spaces and breaks the string into needed segments. Additionally, this method ensures that even edge cases, such as strings with multiple spaces, are handled correctly.
Explanation
-
Understand the Problem
: The task is to count how many segments (substrings separated by spaces) there are in a string
.
s - Constraints and Edge Cases :
- The string can be empty, which should return 0 segments.
- The string may consist of special characters, digits, and letters.
- Consecutive spaces should not be counted as separate segments.
- Plan :
- If the string is empty, directly return 0 segments.
- Use a method to split the string by spaces and count the resulting substrings.
-
The built-in
function splits the string by spaces automatically, discarding any empty splits caused by consecutive spaces.
split() -
Thus, counting the length of the list produced by
gives the number of segments.
split() -
Input
: A string
which can contain letters, digits, special characters, and spaces.
s - Check Empty String :
-
If
is empty, return 0.
s - Split the String :
-
Use the
method which splits the string at spaces and handles consecutive spaces automatically by discarding empty strings from the result.
split() - Count the Segments :
-
The length of the resultant list
gives the count of segments.
segments
# Function to count the number of segments in a string
function countSegments(inputString):
# Check if the string is empty
if inputString is empty:
return 0 # Return 0 segments since there's no content
# Split the string by spaces to get all segments
segments = inputString.split() # This will create a list of segments
# The length of the segments list is the number of segments
return length(segments)
Detailed Steps in Pseudocode
if s is empty:
return 0
segments = s.split()
numberOfSegments = length(segments)
return numberOfSegments
split()