problem with counting words

[Bob Sneidar]

Understandable. And yet the question is not how you are to interpret a word boundary, but how a computer which only knows ones and zeros can. It’s the (computer) age old problem: Computers don’t do what you want them to. They only do what you tell them to. ;-)

A great example is how to discern a first, middle and last name in a full name field. Turns out it cannot be done with 100% reliability. Some names have spaces in them like Mac Donald or apostrophes like O’Connel or hyphens like Foster-Smith. Some people have more than three words in their full name. You would have to create a series of special case statements because when mankind invented last names, computers had not been invented yet.

Bob S


On Oct 12, 2014, at 13:04 , larry at significantplanet.org<mailto:larry at significantplanet.org> wrote:

Hi Terry,
Here is the real problem.  I don't know much.
I'm sitting here assuming that a word is a word, regardless of whether it is inside quotes.