I’m currently taking CS50 and just “completed” (I think lol) the Readability assignment (i.e. assigning a grade level to a text based on the coleman-lindau formula).
Although the instructions recommended using individual functions to find the number of letters, words and sentences in a text, this would involve traversing the entire text 3 times and I wanted to traverse it only once.
I came up with the following solution (in C):
// determine the average word length and average sentence length of the text int letters = 0; int words = 0; int sentences = 0; int i = 0; while (i < strlen(text)) { // check if the character is in the alphabet. If not, move on the the next character while ((65 <= text[i]) && (text[i] <= 122)) { // add the letter to the count letters += 1; // check what follows the letter char let = text[i + 1]; // if the letter is followed by a space, increment words by 1 and skip the space if (let == ' ') { words += 1; i += 2; continue; } // if the letter is followed by any of the below characters, increment words by 1 and skip the character and the space that follows else if ((let == ',') | (let == ':') | (let == ';') | (let == '\"')) { words += 1; i += 3; continue; } // if the letter is followed by the below characters, increment words and sentences by 1 and skip both the character and the following space else if ((let == '.') | (let == '!') | (let == '?')) { words += 1; sentences += 1; i += 3; continue; } else { i++; } } i++; } int letters_per_100_words = ((float) letters / words) * 100; int sentences_per_100_words = ((float) sentences / words) * 100; // use Coleman-Lindau equation on the results to determine the grade level int coleman_lindau = round(0.0588 * letters_per_100_words - 0.296 * sentences_per_100_words - 15.8)```;
I tested my code on all the texts provided by the CS50 instructors and got the same results for grade level on all except 1 (out of 10) of the texts provided by the instructors.
However, I also used an online word counter to check the results I got for letters, words, and sentences, and my code always has the exact same values as the word counter (including on the text for which I got a different result than the instructors).
Can anyone see where the problem is? Also I’m open in general to advice on how to improve the code overall (I’m very new to programming).
