String count with overlapping occurrences
PythonStringSearchPython Problem Overview
What's the best way to count the number of occurrences of a given string, including overlap in Python? This is one way:
def function(string, str_to_search_for):
count = 0
for x in xrange(len(string) - len(str_to_search_for) + 1):
if string[x:x+len(str_to_search_for)] == str_to_search_for:
count += 1
return count
function('1011101111','11')
This method returns 5.
Is there a better way in Python?
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
Well, this might be faster since it does the comparing in C:
def occurrences(string, sub):
count = start = 0
while True:
start = string.find(sub, start) + 1
if start > 0:
count+=1
else:
return count
Solution 2 - Python
>>> import re
>>> text = '1011101111'
>>> len(re.findall('(?=11)', text))
5
If you didn't want to load the whole list of matches into memory, which would never be a problem! you could do this if you really wanted:
>>> sum(1 for _ in re.finditer('(?=11)', text))
5
As a function (re.escape
makes sure the substring doesn't interfere with the regex):
>>> def occurrences(text, sub):
return len(re.findall('(?={0})'.format(re.escape(sub)), text))
>>> occurrences(text, '11')
5
Solution 3 - Python
You can also try using the new Python regex module, which supports overlapping matches.
import regex as re
def count_overlapping(text, search_for):
return len(re.findall(search_for, text, overlapped=True))
count_overlapping('1011101111','11') # 5
Solution 4 - Python
Python's str.count
counts non-overlapping substrings:
In [3]: "ababa".count("aba")
Out[3]: 1
Here are a few ways to count overlapping sequences, I'm sure there are many more :)
Look-ahead regular expressions
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11430863/how-to-find-overlapping-matches-with-a-regexp
In [10]: re.findall("a(?=ba)", "ababa")
Out[10]: ['a', 'a']
Generate all substrings
In [11]: data = "ababa"
In [17]: sum(1 for i in range(len(data)) if data.startswith("aba", i))
Out[17]: 2
Solution 5 - Python
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
count = 0
for pos in range(len(string)):
if string[pos:].startswith(sub_string):
count += 1
return count
This could be the easiest way.
Solution 6 - Python
s = "bobobob"
sub = "bob"
ln = len(sub)
print(sum(sub == s[i:i+ln] for i in xrange(len(s)-(ln-1))))
Solution 7 - Python
How to find a pattern in another string with overlapping
This function (another solution!) receive a pattern and a text. Returns a list with all the substring located in the and their positions.
def occurrences(pattern, text):
"""
input: search a pattern (regular expression) in a text
returns: a list of substrings and their positions
"""
p = re.compile('(?=({0}))'.format(pattern))
matches = re.finditer(p, text)
return [(match.group(1), match.start()) for match in matches]
print (occurrences('ana', 'banana'))
print (occurrences('.ana', 'Banana-fana fo-fana'))
> [('ana', 1), ('ana', 3)]
[('Bana', 0), ('nana', 2), ('fana', 7), ('fana', 15)]
Solution 8 - Python
A fairly pythonic way would be to use list comprehension here, although it probably wouldn't be the most efficient.
sequence = 'abaaadcaaaa'
substr = 'aa'
counts = sum([
sequence.startswith(substr, i) for i in range(len(sequence))
])
print(counts) # 5
The list would be [False, False, True, False, False, False, True, True, False, False]
as it checks all indexes through the string, and because int(True) == 1
, sum
gives us the total number of matches.
Solution 9 - Python
My answer, to the bob question on the course:
s = 'azcbobobegghaklbob'
total = 0
for i in range(len(s)-2):
if s[i:i+3] == 'bob':
total += 1
print 'number of times bob occurs is: ', total
Solution 10 - Python
Here is my edX MIT "find bob"* solution (*find number of "bob" occurences in a string named s), which basicaly counts overlapping occurrences of a given substing:
s = 'azcbobobegghakl'
count = 0
while 'bob' in s:
count += 1
s = s[(s.find('bob') + 2):]
print "Number of times bob occurs is: {}".format(count)
Solution 11 - Python
That can be solved using regex.
import re
def function(string, sub_string):
match = re.findall('(?='+sub_string+')',string)
return len(match)
Solution 12 - Python
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
counter = 0
for i in range(len(string)):
if string[i:].startswith(sub_string):
counter = counter + 1
return counter
Above code simply loops throughout the string once and keeps checking if any string is starting with the particular substring that is being counted.
Solution 13 - Python
re.subn
hasn't been mentioned yet:
>>> import re
>>> re.subn('(?=11)', '', '1011101111')[1]
5
Solution 14 - Python
def count_overlaps (string, look_for):
start = 0
matches = 0
while True:
start = string.find (look_for, start)
if start < 0:
break
start += 1
matches += 1
return matches
print count_overlaps ('abrabra', 'abra')
Solution 15 - Python
Function that takes as input two strings and counts how many times sub occurs in string, including overlaps. To check whether sub is a substring, I used the in
operator.
def count_Occurrences(string, sub):
count=0
for i in range(0, len(string)-len(sub)+1):
if sub in string[i:i+len(sub)]:
count=count+1
print 'Number of times sub occurs in string (including overlaps): ', count
Solution 16 - Python
For a duplicated question i've decided to count it 3 by 3 and comparing the string e.g.
counted = 0
for i in range(len(string)):
if string[i*3:(i+1)*3] == 'xox':
counted = counted +1
print counted
Solution 17 - Python
An alternative very close to the accepted answer but using while
as the if
test instead of including if
inside the loop:
def countSubstr(string, sub):
count = 0
while sub in string:
count += 1
string = string[string.find(sub) + 1:]
return count;
This avoids while True:
and is a little cleaner in my opinion
Solution 18 - Python
If strings are large, you want to use Rabin-Karp, in summary:
-
a rolling window of substring size, moving over a string
-
a hash with O(1) overhead for adding and removing (i.e. move by 1 char)
-
implemented in C or relying on pypy
Solution 19 - Python
This is another example of using str.find()
but a lot of the answers make it more complicated than necessary:
def occurrences(text, sub):
c, n = 0, text.find(sub)
while n != -1:
c += 1
n = text.find(sub, n+1)
return c
In []:
occurrences('1011101111', '11')
Out[]:
5
Solution 20 - Python
Given
sequence = '1011101111'
sub = "11"
Code
In this particular case:
sum(x == tuple(sub) for x in zip(sequence, sequence[1:]))
# 5
More generally, this
windows = zip(*([sequence[i:] for i, _ in enumerate(sequence)][:len(sub)]))
sum(x == tuple(sub) for x in windows)
# 5
or extend to generators:
import itertools as it
iter_ = (sequence[i:] for i, _ in enumerate(sequence))
windows = zip(*(it.islice(iter_, None, len(sub))))
sum(x == tuple(sub) for x in windows)
Alternative
You can use more_itertools.locate
:
import more_itertools as mit
len(list(mit.locate(sequence, pred=lambda *args: args == tuple(sub), window_size=len(sub))))
# 5
Solution 21 - Python
A simple way to count substring occurrence is to use count()
:
>>> s = 'bobob'
>>> s.count('bob')
1
You can use replace ()
to find overlapping strings if you know which part will be overlap:
>>> s = 'bobob'
>>> s.replace('b', 'bb').count('bob')
2
Note that besides being static, there are other limitations:
>>> s = 'aaa'
>>> count('aa') # there must be two occurrences
1
>>> s.replace('a', 'aa').count('aa')
3
Solution 22 - Python
def occurance_of_pattern(text, pattern):
text_len , pattern_len = len(text), len(pattern)
return sum(1 for idx in range(text_len - pattern_len + 1) if text[idx: idx+pattern_len] == pattern)
Solution 23 - Python
I wanted to see if the number of input of same prefix char is same postfix, e.g., "foo"
and """foo""
but fail on """bar""
:
from itertools import count, takewhile
from operator import eq
# From https://stackoverflow.com/a/15112059
def count_iter_items(iterable):
"""
Consume an iterable not reading it into memory; return the number of items.
:param iterable: An iterable
:type iterable: ```Iterable```
:return: Number of items in iterable
:rtype: ```int```
"""
counter = count()
deque(zip(iterable, counter), maxlen=0)
return next(counter)
def begin_matches_end(s):
"""
Checks if the begin matches the end of the string
:param s: Input string of length > 0
:type s: ```str```
:return: Whether the beginning matches the end (checks first match chars
:rtype: ```bool```
"""
return (count_iter_items(takewhile(partial(eq, s[0]), s)) ==
count_iter_items(takewhile(partial(eq, s[0]), s[::-1])))
Solution 24 - Python
If you want to count permutation counts of length 5 (adjust if wanted for different lengths):
def MerCount(s):
for i in xrange(len(s)-4):
d[s[i:i+5]] += 1
return d