Coding Exercise: Word Counting and Reporting in Ruby

This coding exercise examines how to properly count the total number of words in Ruby. Additionally, we’ll walk through how to breakdown the counts for each specific word in a string.

Summary

Use monkeypatching on Ruby’s String class to implement two methods. One that properly counts the total number of words in a string. The method should count the occurrences of each specific word in a string.

Exercise File

Code File

Exercise Description

Given the following string:

'- the quick brown fox / jumped over the lazy fox.'

Add two methods to the String class that: count the total number of words in a string (make sure to not count punctuation as words), and counts how many time each word was used (returned as a hash).

Sample Output Given Sample Input

Total Words

9

Total Words

{
  "the"=>2,
  "quick"=>1,
  "brown"=>1,
  "fox"=>2,
  "jumped"=>1,
  "over"=>1,
  "lazy"=>1
}

Real World Usage

This process is used in many situations, especially scenarios involving content management. Additionally, these are common Ruby coding interview questions.

Solution

Can be found on the solutions branch on github.