The number of distinct words in a sentence

Question

Challenge: Find the number of distinct words in a sentence

Your task is to write a program that takes a sentence as input and returns the number of distinct words in it. For this challenge, words are defined as consecutive sequences of letters, digits, and underscores ('_').

Input:

• A string containing a sentence. The length of the sentence will not exceed 1000 characters.

Output:

• An integer indicating the number of distinct words in the sentence.

Examples:

Input: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
Output: 8

Explanation: The sentence contains 9 words, 8 of which are distinct: "The", "quick", "brown", "fox", "jumps", "over", "lazy", and "dog"

Input: "To be, or not to be, that is the question"
Output: 8

Explanation: The sentence contains 8 distinct words: "To", "be", "or", "not", "that", "is", "the", and "question".

Input: "Hello, World!"
Output: 2

Explanation: The sentence contains 2 distinct words: "Hello" and "World".

Input: "hello-world2"
Output: 2

Explanation: Two distinct words, "hello" and "world2" separated by hyphen.

Input: "Hello, World! Hello!"
Output: 2

Explanation: Only "Hello" and "World" are two distinct words here.

Scoring: This is a code golf challenge, so the goal is to minimize the size of your code while still producing correct output for all test cases. In case of a tie, the earliest submission wins. Good luck!

Answer 1

Bash + GNU utils, 28

grep -Eo \\w+|sort -fu|wc -l

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Answer 2

Python, 54 bytes

lambda s:len({*re.findall('\w+',s.lower())})
import re

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Answer 3

jq, 53 52 50 bytes

-1 byte by Neil for recognizing splitting on just \W works since we handle empty strings anyway. -2 bytes by me for realizing I could ascii_downcase first, saving a . and a |

ascii_downcase+":"|[splits("\\W")]|unique|length-1

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Equivalent 50 byte answer:

ascii_downcase+":"|split("\\W";"")|unique|length-1

Thanks to chune's answer for inspiring me to try golfing splits("\\W+") instead of match("\\W+";"g"). Turns out, despite having to work around the empty string being matched in some cases, it is two bytes shorter!

For those curious, here's the match method:

[match("\\w+";"g").string|ascii_downcase]|unique|length

Answer 4

Perl -p, 24 bytes

$_=grep!$s{+lc}++,/\w+/g

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-1 byte thanks to Kjetil S

Answer 5

JavaScript, 46 bytes

s=>new Set(s.toLowerCase().match(/\w+/g)).size

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Answer 6

Zsh, 36 bytes

<<<${#${(u)=${1:l}//[^[:IDENT:]]/ }}

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Fortunately, the [:IDENT:] character class is exactly the words we should keep.

<<<${#${(u)=${1:l}//[^[:IDENT:]]/ }}
            ${1:l}                    # lowercase string
      ${          //[^[:IDENT:]]/ }   # // replace non-[:IDENT:] with spaces
      ${   =                      }   # = split on $IFS (space/tab/newline
      ${(u)                       }   # keep first occurance of each word
   ${#                             }  # count
<<<                                   # print

Answer 7

Python 3, 34 bytes

lambda i:len({*i.lower().split()})

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Answer 8

PowerShell Core, 49 bytes

($args-split'\W'-ne''|%{$_|% *l*r}|sort|gu).Count

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($args-split'\W'-ne''|%{$_|% *l*r}|sort|gu).Count # full function
 $args-split'\W'-ne''                             # Splits the input string on non words character and remove empty entries
                     |%{$_|% *l*r}                # Calls ToLower() on each of the words
                                  |sort|gu        # Get unique words, Get-Unique needs the list to be sorted to remove all duplicates
(                                         ).Count # Return the count

Answer 9

Thunno, \$ 11 \log_{256}(96) \approx \$ 9.05 bytes

u"\w+"AfZUL

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Same approach as basically every other answer.

u"\w+"AfZUL  # Implicit input
u            # Uppercase
 "\w+"Af     # Regex findall "\w+"
        ZU   # Uniquify
          L  # Length

Answer 10

Excel, 120 bytes

=LET(
    x,MID(UPPER(A1),ROW(A:A),1),
    ROWS(
        UNIQUE(
            TEXTSPLIT(A1,,
                IF((ABS(77.5-CODE(x&"Z"))<13)+1-ISERR(0+x)+(x="_")=0,x),1
            )
        )
    )
)

Answer 11

Japt, 14 bytes

Yet another one of those occasions I regret suggesting the removal of _ from the \w RegEx class in Japt!

f"[%w_]+" üv l

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f"[%w_]+" üv l     :Implicit input of string
f                  :Match
 "[%w_]+"          :  RegEx /[a-z0-9_]/gi
          ü        :Group & sort by
           v       :  Lowercase
             l     :Length

Answer 12

Vyxal, 7 bytes

ɽøWǍUL‹

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Explanation:

ɽ       - Lowercases Input
 øW     - Groups string by words into a list
   Ǎ    - Removes all non-alphabetical items, leaving empty list spaces
    U   - Removes all non-unique list items
     L  - Gets length of list
      ‹ - Decrements by 1, to account for extra list item for first symbol

Answer 13

Factor, 47 46 bytes

[ >lower R/ \W/ re-split harvest cardinality ]

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-1 byte thangs to GammaFunction

• >lower convert input to lowercase
• R/ \W/ re-split split on non-word characters
• harvest remove empty strings
• cardinality length without duplicates

Splitting and harvesting is shorter than simply getting a list of matches because the word for that (all-matching-slices) is super long. Not sure if there is a way to prevent the empty strings in pure regex, might be shorter.

Answer 14

Lua, 103 bytes

function x(i)r=0m={}for c in i:lower():gmatch("%w+")do if not m[c]then m[c]=1r=r+1 end end return r end

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Answer 15

J, 23 bytes

'\w+'#@~.@rxall tolower

Uniquify and count word matches in lowercase input.

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Answer 16

Vyxal, 7 bytes

`†`ẎɽUL

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`†`Ẏ    # find all matches of \w+
    ɽ   # to lowercase
     U  # uniquify
      L # length

With a flag:

Vyxal l, 6 bytes

`†`ẎɽU

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Answer 17

APL (Dyalog Extended), 27 bytes

f←{⍴∪(⎕A,⎕D,'_')(∊⍨⊆⊢)1⎕C⍵}

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f←{⍴∪(⎕A,⎕D,'_')(∊⍨⊆⊢)1⎕C⍵}
                        1⎕C      to uppercase
     (⎕A,⎕D,'_')                 [A-Z0-9_]
     (⎕A,⎕D,'_')(∊⍨⊆⊢)1⎕C       Partition (⊆) using Membership (∊)
    ∪                             remove duplicates
   ⍴                              count words

Answer 18

05AB1E, 12 bytes

žQžjмS¡õKlÙg

Assumes the input will only contain printable ASCII characters.

Try it online or verify all test cases.

Explanation:

žQ            # Push the constant string with all printable ASCII characters
  žj          # Push the constant string with "a-zA-Z0-9_"
    м         # Remove all those characters
     S        # Convert the string to a list of characters
      ¡       # Split the (implicit) input-string by each of those characters
       õK     # Remove any empty strings from the list
         l    # Convert each word to lowercase
          Ù   # Uniquify the list of lowercase words
           g  # Pop and push the length
              # (which is output implicitly as result)

Answer 19

Retina 0.8.2, 15 bytes

T`L`l
D`\w+
\w+

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T`L`l

Convert to lower case.

D`\w+

Deduplicate words.

\w+

Count the number of remaining words.

13 bytes in Retina 1:

D$`\w+
$l
\w+

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D$`\w+
$l

Deduplicate words by lowercased value.

\w+

Count the number of remaining words.

Answer 20

Ruby -n, 32 bytes

p$_.upcase.scan(/\w+/).uniq.size

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Answer 21

Java (JDK), 83 bytes

s->java.util.Arrays.stream((" "+s).toLowerCase().split("\\W")).distinct().count()-1

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Saved 17 bytes thanks to Neil.

Answer 22

Mathematica (Wolfram Language), 31 bytes

Length@*WordCounts@*ToLowerCase

The Mathematica built-in WordCounts treats a hyphenated word as a single word. So this program is not going to work correctly on the fourth example, "hello-world2". I discuss this in the comment below.

Answer 23

C (GCC), 156 + 48 + 22 = 226 bytes

-3 bytes thanks to ceilingcat

Use compiler flags -DW(a)=for(--s;a!isalnum(*++s)|*s==95;)*s|=32; and -DF(a)=for(a=0;a<i;++a).

char*v[99],*e;i,j,k;f(char*s){e=s+strlen(s);W()for(i=0;s<e;){v[i++]=s;W(!)W((*s=0)|)}F(j)F(k)strcmp(v[j],v[k])|j==k||(*v[j]=0);k=0;F(j)*v[j]&&++k;return k;}

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Explanation:

char*v[99],*e;
i,j,k;
f(char*s)
{
    // Set e to the end of s
    e=s+strlen(s);
    // Set s to the first character that is alphanumerical or an underscore.
    W()
    // While s hasn't moved past the end of the string ...
    for(i=0;s<e;) {
        // Store s in v[i], then increment i
        v[i++]=s;
        // Set s to the first character that isn't alphanumerical or an
        // underscore.
        W(!)
        // Set all characters between the current word and the next to 0, and
        // set s to the first character in the next word.
        W((*s=0)|)
    }
    // Iterate through the words with j.
    F(j)
        // Iterate through the words with k.
        F(k)
            // If words at index j and k are equal but j and k aren't the same
            // index, set the first character in word j to 0, marking the word
            // as a duplicate.
            strcmp(v[j],v[k])|j==k||(*v[j]=0);
    k=0;
    F(j)
        // For each word that hasn't been marked as a duplicate, increment k.
        *v[j]&&++k;
    // Return the number of words not marked as a duplicate.
    return k;
}

Answer 24

C (gcc), 275 254 250 249 bytes

• -26 bytes thanks to ceilingcat

To split the words, each uppercased word is stored in a list recursively. Duplicates are nulled out, preventing them from being scanned.

g(s,t,i)char*s,**t;{char*a[2]={0,t},**v,*u;for(;*s&&!isalnum(*s)&&*s-95;s++);u=*a=strdup(s);if(i=*u){for(;*u=*s&&isalnum(*s)|*s==95;*u++=~32&*s++);i=g(s,a);}else for(v=t;v;v=v[1])if(*v)for(i++,t=v;t=t[1];)*t&&!strcmp(*v,*t)?*t=0:0;s=i;}f(s){g(s,0);}

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Ungolfed (with a structure instead of an array):

struct list { char *data; struct list *prev; };

int g(char *s, struct list *t) {
  int i;
  char *u;
  struct list a={0,t}, *v;

  for(;*s&&!(isalnum(*s)&&*s-'_');s++);
  u=a.data=strdup(s); // skip spaces and duplicate the string locally

  if(i=*u){ // collect the word and uppercase it
    for(;*u=*s&&isalnum(*s)|*s=='_';*u++=~32&*s++);
    i=g(s,&a); // recursively generate list
  }else // end of string: process the words
    for(v=t;v;v=v->prev) // from the end, work backwards
      if(v->data) // if not a duplicate
        for(i++,t=v;t=t->prev;) // scan for duplicates
          t->data&&!strcmp(v->data,t->data)?t->data=0:0; // null out duplicates

  s=i; // return the count
}

int f(char *s) { g(s,0); } // initialize the end of list and (implicitly) return the count

Answer 25

Arturo, 35 bytes

$=>[match lower&{/\w+}|unique|size]

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Answer 26

Charcoal, 31 bytes

≔⦃⦄θＦΦ⪪↧Ｓ⁻⪪γ¹⊞ＯＥ³⁶⍘ιφ_ι§≔θιιＩＬθ

Attempt This Online! Link is to verbose version of code. Explanation: Inspired by @KevinCruijssen's 05AB1E answer, so assumes the input only contains printable ASCII.

≔⦃⦄θ

Start with an empty dictionary.

ＦΦ⪪↧Ｓ⁻⪪γ¹⊞ＯＥ³⁶⍘ιφ_ι

Split the lowercased input on all printable ASCII except the characters used to encode base 36 and _, and...

§≔θιι

... set each word as a key in the dictionary.

ＩＬθ

Output the final length of the dictionary.

Answer 27

Raku, 21 bytes

+*.lc.comb(/\w+/).Set

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This is an anonymous function. The argument (*) is converted to lowercase (.lc), then the substrings matching one or more word characters are extracted (.comb(/\w+/)) and converted to a set (.Set), which discards the duplicates. Finally, that set is expressed as a number (+), yielding its size.

Answer 28

PHP 8.x, 87 bytes

This is a quite long piece of code...

fn($z)=>count(array_flip(array_filter(array_map('strtolower',preg_split('/\W+/',$z)))))

It's almost self-explanatory.

It's so void of PHP-only tricks that it is so trivial to re-implement it into JavaScript!

// PHP-like code
let fn = ($z)=>count(array_flip(array_filter(array_map('strtolower',preg_split('\\W+',$z)))));

// Test boilerplate that has enough functionality
function count(value) {
  return value.length;
}

function strtolower(str) {
  return str.toLowerCase();
}

function preg_split(regex, subject) {
  return subject.split(new RegExp(regex));
}

function array_filter(array) {
  return array.filter(function(value){
    return value !== '';
  });
}

function array_flip(array) {
  return Array.from(new Set(array));
}

function array_map(fn, array) {
  return array.map(typeof fn === 'string' ? window[fn] : fn);
}

// Event handler - does the basic output thing
text.oninput = function(){
  output.innerText = fn(this.value);
};

<input type="text" id="text"/>

<p>Output: <span id="output">--</span></p>

---

Differences

There aren't a lot of differences between the PHP and JavaScript versions:

• The fn($z)=>[...] has to be written without the fn bit.
• The regular expression has to be escaped and can't have the slashes.
  This means it changes from /\W+/ to \\W+.
• The function array_flip only returns a set of all unique values.
  The PHP function returns the array with the keys set from the values.
  That is, an array like ['a', 'fox', 'a', 'car'] will be returned as ['a' => 2, 'fox' => 1, 'car' => 3] while JavaScript returns ['a', 'fox', 'car'].
  The end result is the same: an array that has the same number of unique elements.

These differences won't affect the accuracy of the results.
But, it's worth to deal with them to give you an improved testing environment.