use-revolution Digest, Vol 26, Issue 7

[Marielle Lange]

Dear all,

They have already been many replies to that post that I read only  
now. But they all seemed very long to me. I used it as an excuse to  
get back to transcript programming after a month away from any  
computer. I propose an entry for the shortest solution. You have to  
assume that the head and tails series are in a text field called  
"headtails" and the script executed when pressing on a button.

The reason I post this, long after the original mail is because an  
original solution could be used, thanks to regular expressions and  
the possibility you have to define a letter or a text part to be  
matched a specific number of times. This is captured with the (text) 
{3} syntax. By replacing the repetition of letter with nothing, it is  
possible to keep track of the number of matches for each nplets of  
letters.

on mouseup
   put empty into tresult; put field "headtails" into headtails
   put replacetext(headtails, "[^THth]","") into headtails  --  
precaution to discard any non TH character
   put toUpper(headtails) into headtails    -- precaution
   put "H" into coin[1]; put "T" into coin[2]
   put "Head" into coinName[1]; put "Tail" into coinName[2]
   put false into fstMatch
   repeat with x = 5 down to 1             -- replace 5 with the  
expected length of the longest match,
                                                                -- or  
if that value is unknown and cannot be guessed, with the length of  
the headtails string.
     repeat with c = 1 to 2                      -- flip between head  
and tails.
       put replacetext(headtails,"(" & coin[c] & "){" & x & "}", "")  
into tresult
       if  tresult <> headtails then           -- a match was found
         put coinName[c] & " x " & x & " = " & ((length(headtails)  -  
length(tresult)) / x) & cr after tTable
         put replacetext(headtails,"(" & coin[c] & "){" & x & "}",  
"#") into headtails
         put true into fstMatch  -- this is so the the table only  
starts with the maximum number of matches
       else if fstMatch is true then
         put coinName[c] & " x " & x & " = " & 0 & cr after tTable
       end if
     end repeat
   end repeat
   sort lines of tTable descending by item 1 of each
   put tTable
end mouseup


I am now at Nov 2. Only a bit more of 150 digests to skim through...

Marielle

> On 10/31/05 4:22 PM, "Jason Tangen" <j.tangen at unsw.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm trying to solve a seemingly simple problem and I could use some
>> help. A coin flip will come out "Heads" or "Tails" and will produce,
>> for example, the following series for 20 flips:
>>
>> T,T,H,T,T,H,H,H,T,T,H,T,H,H,H,T,H,T,H,T
>>
>> I need to count up the number events for a particular run.  For  
>> example,
>>
>> Heads x 3 = 2
>> Heads x 2 = 0
>> Heads x 1 = 4
>> Tails x 1 = 4
>> Tails x 2 = 3
>> Tails x 3 = 0
>>
>> I need to account for runs up to 60 (rather than 3 above) for  
>> hundreds of flips (rather than 20 above).
>> I've been using a very clumsy multiple if-then solution to date,  
>> but this quickly becomes difficult with many runs.
>>
>> Can someone point me in the right direction?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jason
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--------
Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
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