Problem of the Day
A new programming or logic puzzle every Mon-Fri

Comments:

• Kevin Benton - 9 years, 1 month ago

  I got 15

  from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
  import requests
  
  # create a subclass and override the handler methods
  class POTDParser(HTMLParser):
      def __init__(self):
          HTMLParser.__init__(self)
          self.inproblem = False
          self.problemdata = []
          self.number_of_open_divs = 0
  
      def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
          for key, val in attrs:
              if key == 'id' and val == 'content':
                  self.inproblem = True
          if self.inproblem and tag == 'div':
              self.number_of_open_divs += 1
  
      def handle_endtag(self, tag):
          if self.inproblem and tag == 'div':
              self.number_of_open_divs -= 1
          if self.number_of_open_divs < 1:
              self.inproblem = False
  
      def handle_data(self, data):
          if self.inproblem:
              self.problemdata.append(data)
  
      def get_data(self):
          return ' '.join(self.problemdata)
  
  body = requests.get('http://www.problemotd.com/problem/lowercase-as/')
  parser = POTDParser()
  parser.feed(body.text)
  
  print len(filter(lambda x: x=='a', parser.get_data()))
  

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• asheehan - 9 years, 1 month ago

  Here is the main logic in Ruby: ``` input = "It is, regrettably, not the case that all people who work as software engineers can e.g. code a for loop which counts the numbers of lower-case As in a string. This is true even if you spot them the syntax for a for loop and finding the Nth character in a string. It is equally true if you allow them to complete the task in isolation, at their own computer, given an arbitrary amount of time to complete it.A"

  findChar = 'a' counter = 0 i = 0 while (i = input.index(findChar, i+1)) and (i < input.length) do counter += 1 end

  p counter ```

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• asheehan - 9 years, 1 month ago

  shoot, formatted properly

  input = "It is, regrettably, not the case that all people who work as software engineers can e.g. code a for loop which counts the numbers of lower-case As in a string. This is true even if you spot them the syntax for a for loop and finding the Nth character in a string. It is equally true if you allow them to complete the task in isolation, at their own computer, given an arbitrary amount of time to complete it.A"
  
  findChar = 'a'
  counter = 0
  i = 0
  while (i = input.index(findChar, i+1)) and (i < input.length) do
      counter += 1
  end
  
  p counter
  

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• nrobinson - 9 years, 1 month ago

  I got 11

  var count = 0;
  
  var text = "Over the weekend there was a discussion of bad programmers in the work force over on Hacker News. One comment suggested that several employed engineers couldn't figure out the number of lowercase A's in a string. So today's challenge is to find the number of lowercase A's in this post."
  
  for(var i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {
    if (text.charCodeAt(i) === "a".charCodeAt(0)) {
      count++;
    }
  }
  

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• Zekaykay - 9 years, 1 month ago

  <?php $text = '... Here is the string ...';

  $result = substr_count($text,'a');

  echo $result;

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• Jt - 9 years, 1 month ago

  JavaScript, I got 15.

  //Short answer: postText.match(/a/g).length
  
  //Long answer
  this.window.onload = function () {
    var postText = 'Happy Monday! Over the weekend there was a discussion of bad programmers in the work force over on Hacker News. One comment suggested that several employed engineers couldn\'t figure out the number of lowercase A\'s in a string. So today\'s challenge is to find the number of lowercase A\'s in this post. Note: you don\'t have to count the A\'s in the html for the link to the comment.';
    var regexPattern = /a/g;
    this.document.writeln(postText);
    this.document.writeln("<br />");
    this.document.writeln("Count of A\'s: " + postText.match(regexPattern).length);
    this.document.writeln("<br />");
    this.document.writeln(postText.replace(regexPattern, '<b>a</b>'));
  };
  

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• Anonymous - 9 years, 1 month ago

  I don't feel like scraping the text off the webpage, so I'm just copying and pasting into my crude Python solution.

  postText = '''Lowercase A's
  
  Happy Monday!
  
  Over the weekend there was a discussion of bad programmers in the work force over on Hacker News. One comment suggested that several employed engineers couldn't figure out the number of lowercase A's in a string. So today's challenge is to find the number of lowercase A's in this post.
  
  Note: you don't have to count the A's in the html for the link to the comment.'''
  
  print postText.count('a')
  
  #simple proof A is not counted
  print "aA".count('a')
  

  Perhaps if I'm motivated later, I'll make a nicer version that doesn't have hard coded text. For now, I want to get caught up again.

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