Exercise 3-4

Write a program to report the length of the longest and shortest string in its input.

Solution

I notice that the solution to this problem will be somewhat similar to the Solution to Exercise 3-3 (identify number of distinct elements in a vector). Except this time we are determining the length of the longest and shortest (string) elements. I therefore expect the eventual program to be similar.

Strategy

• Ask user to provide the list of words so we can append the string elements to a vector, v.
• Compute the size of vector, N.
• If vector size is 0, output an error message (as we need at least 1 string). Exit program peacefully with return code 1.
• If vector size is 1, we compute the size of the string element v[0]. The length of the longest string, SL, will be the same as the length of the shortest string, SS.
• If vector size is 2 or above, we apply an algorithm to compute SL and SS (to be explained further below).

Algorithm

The algorithm (for the case of vector size of 2 or above) is described as followings:

• Notice that this time we do not need to sort the vector – the condition checks downstream will be sufficient to update SS and SL.
• We initialise SL and SS to the size of the first string element v[0]. SL and SS will be updated accordingly during the comparison step.
• We initialise the index B to 1. This will be used for comparing the length of the v[B] with respect to SS and SL.
• We perform N-1 number of comparisons between v[B] and the current SL and SS. (e.g. if there are 10 elements, we can only compare 9 sets of adjacent elements).
• During each comparison step, if v[B].size() is larger than SL, we re-assign SL to v[B].size().
• If v[B].size() is smaller than SS, we re-assign SS to v[B].size().
• (If the two element lengths are equal, we do nothing.)
• We then increment the indices B by 1 for the next comparisons.
• We display the final value of SS and SL – these are the lengths of the shortest and longest strings elements within the vector v.

The Program

Putting this all together, we have our full program.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

using std::cin;             // <iostream>
using std::cout;            // <iostream>
using std::endl;            // <iostream>
using std::string;          // <string>
using std::vector;          // <string>

int main()
{
    // display header message
    cout << "***************************************************************\n"
            "*** This program reports the longest and shortest strings   ***\n"
            "***************************************************************\n";
    cout << endl;

    // ask for a list of numbers and store the list as a vector
    cout << "Enter a list of words one by one: ";
    vector<string> v;
    string x;
    while (cin >> x)
        v.push_back(x);    // append new input to the vector

    cout << endl;

    // define and compute core vector variables
    typedef vector<string>::size_type vecSize;   // define a type for vector size related variables
    vecSize N = v.size();            // number of elements in the vector
    vecSize numLoops = N - 1;        // number of (comparison) operators required

    typedef string::size_type strSize;   // define a type for string size related variables
    strSize SL;              // the length of the longest word
    strSize SS;              // the length of the shortest word

    // Check vector size, action accordingly
    if (N ==0 )
    {
        cout << "You need to enter at least 1 word! " << endl;
        return 1;
    }

    else if (N ==1 )
    {
        SL = v[0].size();
        cout << "Only 1 string supplied. The length of string = " << SL << endl;
        return 0;
    }

    else
    {
        // display some results to console window
        cout << "Vector size (number of words entered): " << N << endl;
        cout << endl;

        // declare new variables
        vecSize A = 0;     // vector index
        vecSize B = 1;     // vector index
        SS = v[0].size();            // the length of the shortest word
        SL = v[0].size();            // the length of the longest word

        // Loop through the vector, compute ND, and compute SS and SL
        for (vecSize i = 0; i != numLoops; ++i)
        {
            if (v[B].size() > SL)
            {
                SL = v[B].size();
            }
            if (v[B].size() < SS)
            {
                SS = v[B].size();
            }
            ++B;
        }
        // Display final results
        cout << endl;
        cout << "Length of shortest word: " << SS << endl;
        cout << "Length of longest word: " << SL << endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

Result

Below shows the results of the 3 sets of test:

• N = 0
• N=1
• N>=2

The results appear to agree well with the algorithm used.

N = 0

***************************************************************
*** This program reports the longest and shortest strings   ***
***************************************************************

Enter a list of words one by one: ^Z

You need to enter at least 1 word!

Process returned 1 (0x1)   execution time : 3.156 s

N = 1

***************************************************************
*** This program reports the longest and shortest strings   ***
***************************************************************

Enter a list of words one by one: a23456789
^Z

Only 1 string supplied. The length of string = 9

N >= 2

***************************************************************
*** This program reports the longest and shortest strings   ***
***************************************************************

Enter a list of words one by one: a23456789
a23456
a2345b
a234
a234567890
^Z

Vector size (number of words entered): 5


Length of shortest word: 4
Length of longest word: 10

Reference

Koenig, Andrew & Moo, Barbara E., Accelerated C++, Addison-Wesley, 2000