Question

#Write a function called 'string_type' which accepts one #string argument and determines what type of string it is. # # - If the string is empty, return "empty". # - If the string is a single character, return "character". # - If the string represents a single word, return "word". # The string is a single word if it has no spaces. # - If the string is a whole sentence, return "sentence". # The string is a sentence if it contains spaces, but # at most one period. # - If the string is a paragraph, return "paragraph". The # string is a paragraph if it contains both spaces and # multiple periods (we won't worry about other # punctuation marks). # - If the string is multiple paragraphs, return "page". # The string is a paragraph if it contains any newline # characters ("\n"). # #Hint: think carefully about what order you should check #these conditions in. # #Hint 2: remember, there exists a count() method that #counts the number of times a string appears in another #string. For example, "blah blah blah".count("blah") #would return 3.

Answer 1

Answer:

I am writing a Python program:

def string_type(string):

   if string=="":  //if the string is empty

       return "empty"

   elif string.count(".")>1:  #if the period sign occurs more than once in string

       if string.count("\n"):  #checks if the new line occurs in the string

           return "page"  #if both the above cases are true then its a page

       return "paragraph"  # if the period sign condition is true then its a para

   elif string.count(" ")>=1:  #if no of spaces in string occur more than once

       return "sentence"  #returns sentence

   elif len(string)==1:  # if length of the string is 1 this

       return "character"  #returns character

   else:  #if none of the above conditions is true then its a word

       return "word" #returns word

Explanation:

def string_type(string):  this is the definition of method string_type which takes a string as argument and determines whether the type of string is a word, paragraph, page, sentence or empty.

if string=="" this if condition checks if the string is empty. If this condition is true then the method returns "empty"

elif string.count(".")>1  This condition checks if the string type is a paragragh

string.count(".")>1   and if string.count("\n") both statements check if the string type is a page.

Here the count() method is used which is used to return the number of times a specified string or character appears in the given string.

Suppose the string is "Paragraphs need to have multiple sentences. It's true.\n However, two is enough. Yes, two sentences can make a paragraph."

The if condition first checks if count(".")>1 which means it counts the occurrence of period i.e. "." in the string. If the period occurs more than once this means it could be a page. But it could also be a paragraph so in order to determine the correct string type another if statement if string.count("\n") inside elif statement determines if the string is a page or not. This statement checks the number of times a new line appears in the string. So this distinguishes the string type paragraph from string type page.

elif string.count(" ")>=1: statement determines if the string is a sentence. For example if the string is "i love to eat apples." count() method counts the number of times " " space appears in the string. If the space appears more than once this means this cannot be a single word or a character and it has more than one words. So this means its a sentence.

  elif len(string)==1:  this else if condition checks the length of the string. If the length of the string is 1 this means the string only has a single character. Suppose string is "!" Then the len (string) = 1 as it only contains exclamation mark character. So the method returns "character" . If none of the above if and elif conditions evaluates to true then this means the string type is a word.