Natural Language Processing

What happens to two spaces?

BOTIE

Build a word counter that treats repeated spaces and tabs as separators. Empty pieces should not become words.
Ready to test
0 passed · 0 failed · 2 not run

An empty floor. Start with the information your machine needs.

Received result

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Examples, experiments and workspace controls
Live values

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Try your own inputs

Use a copy of the example to try your own data. Keep the problem's assumptions in mind, and predict the effect of a change before checking the output. You can also add another branch to compare two ways of doing the calculation.

Start at an output arrow, then click or drag to an input. Drag empty space to pan. Delete removes a selection. Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes a change.
Context for this challenge

Build a word counter that treats repeated spaces and tabs as separators. Empty pieces should not become words.

Botie's document counter should count words without inventing extra ones whenever a writer inserts repeated spaces or a tab.

Split on whitespace using the word tool, then count the resulting pieces.

Examples and results
Message
cat  dog
Required result
2
Message
red	blue  green
Required result
3
Try a fresh construction

This clears this draft, including its undo history. Earlier successful attempts stay recorded. Build again without opening hints to record an independent attempt.

Stuck? Inspect a worked construction

The tools below form one possible solution. You can assemble it, follow its signals, and undo that change to return to your own construction.

Assumptions and test precision

This is a small construction problem. The lesson explains the assumptions and the parts of the full method that this example leaves out. Numerical tests allow a difference of 0.001. Lists and structures must also have the right shape.

Whitespace changes, punctuation stays inside a piece

This check uses the pieces from “Count nonempty whitespace-delimited words”.

BOTIE

Count pieces after splitting on runs of whitespace. The input includes a newline and a tab. A comma without surrounding whitespace is not a separator for this rule.
Message
  red
blue	green,green  

Use a number, text, or an array matching the requested result. For a matrix, put each row in brackets. Saving your prediction runs your current construction on these inputs and checks the earlier examples too.

Build a construction in the workspace above first. This case will test those pieces.

Could you reconstruct the exact original spacing from the resulting words?

A preprocessing choice that is suitable for counting may discard information needed for reconstruction.

This is a small construction problem. The lesson explains the assumptions and the parts of the full method that this example leaves out.

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