Develop Reference

Method that takes a message and index, creates a substring using the index

Problem: I want to write a method that takes a message/index pair like this:
("Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?", 2)
The index refers to the asterisk delimited name in the message. So if the index is 1, it should refer to *Name1, if it's 2 it should refer to *Name2.
The method should return just the name with the asterisk (*Name2).
I have attempted to play around with substrings, taking the first delimited * and ending when we reach a character that isn't a letter, number, underscore or hyphen, but the logic just isn't setting in.
I know this is similar to a few problems on SO but I can't find anything this specific. Any help is appreciated.
This is what's left of my very vague attempt so far. Based on this thread:
public string GetIndexedNames(string message, int index)
{
int strStart = message.IndexOf("#") + "#".Length;
int strEnd = message.LastIndexOf(" ");
String result = message.Substring(strStart, strEnd - strStart);
}

If you want to do it the old school way, then something like:
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
string message = "Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?";
string name1 = GetIndexedNames(message, "*", 1);
string name2 = GetIndexedNames(message, "*", 2);
Console.WriteLine(message);
Console.WriteLine(name1);
Console.WriteLine(name2);
Console.ReadLine();
}
public static string GetIndexedNames(string message, string singleCharDelimiter, int index)
{
string valid = "abcdefghijlmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789_-";
string[] parts = message.Split(singleCharDelimiter.ToArray());
if (parts.Length >= index)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(int i = 0; i < parts[index].Length; i++)
{
string character = parts[index].Substring(i, 1);
if (valid.Contains(character))
{
sb.Append(character);
}
else
{
return sb.ToString();
}
}
return sb.ToString();
}
return "";
}

You can try using regular expressions to match the names. Assuming that name is a sequence of word characters (letters or digits):
using System.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
...
// Either name with asterisk *Name or null
// index is 1-based
private static ObtainName(string source, int index) => Regex
.Matches(source, #"\*\w+")
.Cast<Match>()
.Select(match => match.Value)
.Distinct() // in case the same name repeats several times
.ElementAtOrDefault(index - 1);
Demo:
string name = ObtainName(
"Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?", 2);
Console.Write(name);
Outcome:
*Name2

Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but if you want to use IndexOf, use a loop:
public static string GetIndexedNames(string message, int index, char marker='*')
{
int lastFound = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) {
lastFound = message.IndexOf(marker, lastFound+1);
if (lastFound == -1) return null;
}
var space = message.IndexOf(' ', lastFound);
return space == -1 ? message.Substring(lastFound) : message.Substring(lastFound, space - lastFound);
}

Spliting a string by capital letters except for certain keywords

The following function splits a string at any uppercase character found within the string.
public static string ToSentence(this string input)
{
var list = new List<char>();
for (var i = 0; i < input.ToCharArray().Length; i++)
{
var c = input.ToCharArray()[i];
foreach (char c1 in i > 0 && char.IsUpper(c) ? new[] {' ', c} : new[] {c})
list.Add(c1);
}
return new string(list.ToArray());
}
In my code, this function is being used in conjunction with another function that retrieves the name of the current method in code. I'm finding this function breaks when a method name contains multiple capital letters sequentially.
For example, if I have a method called GetDatabaseIDE() it would return as "Get Database I D E"
How can I change my ToSentence function so that it accepts a list of keywords that won't be split (For example, I D E becomes IDE)?

Why not try Regex ? Demo # https://dotnetfiddle.net/FsPZ9O
1. ([A-Z]+) - match all leading uppercase char.
2. ([^A-Z])* - followed with zero-or-more of any that isn't an uppercase char.
Regex.Matches("GetDatabaseIDE", #"([A-Z]+)([^A-Z])*").Cast<Match>().Select(m => m.Value);

TakeWhile method can be useful here, once you find an upper case character, you can take the following upper case characters:
for (var i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
{
var c = input[i];
if(char.IsUpper(c))
{
var charsToAdd = input.Skip(i).TakeWhile(char.IsUpper).ToArray();
if(charsToAdd.Length > 1)
{
i += charsToAdd.Length - 1;
}
if(i > 0) list.Add(' ');
list.Add(charsToAdd);
}
else
{
list.Add(c);
}
}

you can add keywords you want to skip:
public static string ToSentence(string input)
{
var list = new List<char>();
for (var i = 0; i < input.ToCharArray().Length; i++)
{
if(input.IndexOf("IDE",i,input.Length-i)==i){
list.AddRange(" IDE");
i+=2;
}
else{
var c = input.ToCharArray()[i];
foreach (char c1 in i > 0 && char.IsUpper(c) ? new[] {' ', c} : new[] {c})
list.Add(c1);
}
}
return new string(list.ToArray());
}
watch it here

This will work for your example, you will have to tweak it if your method names have numbers in them
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
public static string GetNiceName(string testString)
{
var pattern = "([A-Z][a-z]+)|([A-Z]+)";
var result = new List<string>();
foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(testString, pattern))
{
result.Add(m.Groups[0].Value);
}
return string.Join(" ", result);
}

While loop for alphabet

I am trying to code the following example.
Input ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Output ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
If user types in A it will output Z. It has to go past 25 characters to reach Z. So I am guessing a while loop will be needed, then if B it has to go through 23 times, so – 2 and so on until it reaches M as it will skip though 1 to reach N, then start again at 25.
Any suggestion on how to approach this?

Capital ASCII characters range according to the ASCII-table from 65 (0x41, 'A') to 90 (0x5A, 'Z').
This is the algorithm:
// inputChar is a char holding your character
char inputChar = getCharFromUser();
int inputVal = inputChar - 65; // e.g. 0 for 'A', 1 for 'B'
char outputChar = 90 - inputVal; // e.g. 90 - 1 = 89 = 'Y'
outputCharToUser(outputChar);
And this is how you might implement it in C#:
while (true)
{
var key = Console.ReadKey(intercept: true);
var inputChar = char.ToUpper(key.KeyChar);
var outputChar = (char)('Z' - inputChar + 'A');
Console.Write("{0}={1} ", inputChar, outputChar);
}

You could use two dictionaries which enable to lookup the char from index and vice-versa:
var indexLookup = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
.Select((chr, index) => new { chr, index })
.ToDictionary(x => x.chr, x => x.index);
var charLookup = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
.Select((chr, index) => new { chr, index })
.ToDictionary(x => x.index, x => x.chr);
Now it's simple, the essential part is charLookup[25 - indexOfChar]:
string userInput = "B";
bool isUpper = char.IsUpper(userInput[0]);
char inputChar = Char.ToLowerInvariant(userInput[0]);
if(indexLookup.ContainsKey(inputChar))
{
int indexOfChar = indexLookup[inputChar];
char oppositeChar = charLookup[25 - indexOfChar];
string result = isUpper ? Char.ToUpperInvariant(oppositeChar).ToString() : oppositeChar.ToString();
Console.Write(result); // Y
}
Actually you don't need two dictionaries but only one since the string can already be used to lookup a char by index. Here is a class which provides the logic:
public class CharSwap
{
private string alphabet;
private Dictionary<char, int> indexLookup;
public CharSwap() : this("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz") { }
public CharSwap(string alphabet)
{
if(alphabet == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("alphabet");
this.alphabet = alphabet;
indexLookup = alphabet.Select((chr, index) => new { chr, index }).ToDictionary(x => x.chr, x => x.index);
}
public char? OppositeChar(char input)
{
char lowerChar = Char.ToLowerInvariant(input);
if (!indexLookup.ContainsKey(lowerChar))
return null;
int indexOfChar = indexLookup[lowerChar];
int indexOpposite = alphabet.Length - 1 - indexOfChar;
return Char.IsUpper(input)
? Char.ToUpperInvariant(alphabet[indexOpposite])
: alphabet[indexOpposite];
}
}
Test:
CharSwap cw = new CharSwap();
char? oppositeChar = cw.OppositeChar('B');
Console.Write(oppositeChar);

char input = 'B';
string Range = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
char result = Range[Range.Length - 1 - Range.IndexOf(input)]; //Y
or maybe another approach
char input = 'B';
string Range = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
char result = Range.Reverse().ElementAt(Range.IndexOf(input)); //Y

How about something like this?
char[] alphabet = {'A','B', 'C'} // and so on
char[] mapsTo = {'Z', 'Y', 'X'} // and so on, excluded for brevity
public function string changeLetter(char input)
{
int i = 0;
foreach (char c in alphabet) {
if (c == input) {
return mapsTo[i];
}
i++;
}
return '';
}
Converted to c#:
char[] alphabet = {'A','B', 'C'}; // and so on
char[] mapsTo = {'Z', 'Y', 'X'}; // and so on, excluded for brevity
public string changeLetter(char input)
{
int i = 0;
foreach (char c in alphabet) {
if (c == input) {
return mapsTo[i].ToString();
}
i++;
}
return default(char).ToString();
}
You would call this function like this (for instance):
public static void RunProgram()
{
Console.WriteLine("Please type in character");
input = Console.ReadKey().KeyChar;
Console.WriteLine("You typed in " + input + ". This results in: " + ChangeInput(input));
}
... where "ChangeInput" is the function defined earlier.

The easy way to solve this is to use a Dictionary<char, char>:
public class Atbash {
static string source = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
static List<char> keys = source.ToList();
static List<char> values = source.Reverse().ToList();
static Dictionary<char, char> Converter = keys.ToDictionary(x => x, x => values[keys.IndexOf(x)]);
public static char Convert(char input)
{
char output;
bool isUpper = char.IsUpper(input);
input = char.ToLowerInvariant(input);
if(Converter.ContainsKey(input)) {
output = Converter[input];
return (isUpper) ? char.ToUpperInvariant(output) : output;
}
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("Input char is unknown");
// of course, it can return default(char) instead of throwing an exception.
}
}
Why Atbash? read about it here.

String to char to strings

I want to make a program which takes a string you entered and turn it to different string, so if for example I input "Hello World" every char will turn into a string and the console will output something like "Alpha Beta Gamma Gamma Zeta Foxtrot Dona Rama Lana Zema" - making every char a word.
I tried doing it like this :
static string WordMap(string value)
{
char[] buffer = value.ToCharArray();
for (int i = 0; i < buffer.Length; i++)
{
if (letter = "a")
{
letter = ("Alpha");
}
//and so on
buffer[i] = letter;
}
return new string(buffer);
}
but I just can't get it to work.
can anyone give me a tip or point me at the right direction?

What you need is a Dictionary<char,string>
var words = new Dictionary<char, string>();
words.Add('a', "Alpha");
words.Add('b',"Beta");
...
string input = Console.ReadLine();
string[] contents = new string[input.Length];
for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
{
if (words.ContainsKey(input[i]))
{
contents[i] = words[input[i]];
}
}
string result = string.Join(" ", contents);
Or LINQ way:
var result = string.Join(" ", input.Where(words.ContainsKey).Select(c => words[c]));

First off, the buffer is a char array. Arrays have a fixed size and to expand them you need to create a new one. To overcome this cumbersome work, there is a StringBuilder class that does this automatically.
Secondly, if you keep these 'Alpha', 'Beta', ... strings in if statements you will have a very long piece of code. You can replace this by using a dictionary, or create it from a single string or text file.
To put this into practice:
class MyClass
{
static Dictionary<char, string> _map = new Dictionary<char, string>();
static MyClass()
{
_map.Add('a', "Alpha");
_map.Add('b', "Beta");
// etc
}
static string WordMap(string data)
{
var output = new StringBuilder();
foreach (char c in data)
{
if (_map.ContainsKey(c))
{
output.Append(_map[c]);
output.Append(' ');
}
}
return output.ToString();
}
}
Solution without a dictionary:
static string WordMap(string data)
{
const string words = "Alpha Beta Gamma Delta ...";
string[] wordMap = words.Split(' ');
var output = new StringBuilder();
foreach (char c in data)
{
int index = c - 'a';
if (index >= 0 && index < wordMap.Length)
{
output.Append(wordMap[index]);
output.Append(' ');
}
}
return output.ToString();
}

With LINQ and String.Join it's short and readable. Since you want to have a new word for special chards you need a word-map. I would use a Dictionary<char, string>:
static Dictionary<char, string> wordMap = new Dictionary<char, string>()
{
{'a', "Alpha"}, {'b', "Beta"},{'c', "Gamma"}, {'d', "Delta"}
};
static string WordMap(string value)
{
var strings = value
.Select(c =>
{
string word;
if(!wordMap.TryGetValue(c, out word))
word = c.ToString();
return word;
});
return string.Join("", strings);
}
Test:
string newString = WordMap("abcdeghj"); // AlphaBetaGammaDeltaeghj

Tips:
You don't have to create character array from string, you can easily access single characters in string by indexer:
char some = "123"[2];
When you use "" then you create string not char therefore you should use '' to create character for comparison:
if (some == 'a') Console.WriteLine("character is a, see how you compare chars!!!");

A good solution ...
string[] words = { "Alpha", "Beta", "C_word", "D_Word" }; // ....
string myPhrase = "aBC";
myPhrase.Replace(" ", string.Empty).ToList().ForEach(a =>
{
int asciiCode = (int)a;
/// ToUpper()
int index = asciiCode >= 97 ? asciiCode - 32 : asciiCode;
Console.WriteLine(words[index - 65]); // ascii --> 65-a , 66-b ...
});

One more variation of answer which contains not found option.
static Dictionary<char, string> Mapping =
new Dictionary<char, string>()
{ { 'a', "alpha" }, { 'b', "beta" }, { 'c', "gamma" }, { 'd', "zeta" } };
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string test = "abcx";
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(" ", test.Select(t => GetMapping(t))));
//output alpha beta gamma not found
Console.ReadKey();
}
static string GetMapping(char key)
{
if (Mapping.ContainsKey(key))
return Mapping.First(a => a.Key == key).Value;
else
return "not found";
}

Just declare a second variable where you build up your result.
And I think you have some syntax problems, you need to have "==" in a
condition, otherwise it's an assignment.
static string WordMap(string value)
{
string result = string.Empty;
char[] buffer = value.ToCharArray();
for (int i = 0; i < buffer.Length; i++)
{
if (letter == "a")
{
result += ("Alpha");
}
//and so on
}
return result;
}
But I would only do this that way, if this is "just for fun" code,
as it will not be very fast.
Building up the result like I did is slow, a better way would be
result = string.Concat(result, "(Alpha)");
And an even faster way is using a StringBuilder (s. documentation for that),
which offers you fast and convenient methods to deal with bigger strings.
Only downfall here is, that you need to know a little bit, how big the result
will be in characters, as you need to provide a starting dimension.
And here you should not start with simply 1, or 100. Each time, when the StringBuilder
is full, it creates a new bigger instance and copies the values, so multiple instances
of that will fill your memory, which can cause an out of memory exception,
when dealing with some ten thousands of characters.
But as said, for just for fun code, all of that does not matter...
And of course, you need to be aware, that if you do it like that, your result will
be in one straight line, no breaks. If you want line breaks add "\n" at the end of
the strings. Or add anything elese you need.
Regards,
Markus

Determine if string has all unique characters

I'm working through an algorithm problem set which poses the following question:
"Determine if a string has all unique characters. Assume you can only use arrays".
I have a working solution, but I would like to see if there is anything better optimized in terms of time complexity. I do not want to use LINQ. Appreciate any help you can provide!
static void Main(string[] args)
{
FindDupes("crocodile");
}
static string FindDupes(string text)
{
if (text.Length == 0 || text.Length > 256)
{
Console.WriteLine("String is either empty or too long");
}
char[] str = new char[text.Length];
char[] output = new char[text.Length];
int strLength = 0;
int outputLength = 0;
foreach (char value in text)
{
bool dupe = false;
for (int i = 0; i < strLength; i++)
{
if (value == str[i])
{
dupe = true;
break;
}
}
if (!dupe)
{
str[strLength] = value;
strLength++;
output[outputLength] = value;
outputLength++;
}
}
return new string(output, 0, outputLength);
}

If time complexity is all you care about you could map the characters to int values, then have an array of bool values which remember if you've seen a particular character value previously.
Something like ... [not tested]
bool[] array = new bool[256]; // or larger for Unicode
foreach (char value in text)
if (array[(int)value])
return false;
else
array[(int)value] = true;
return true;

try this,
string RemoveDuplicateChars(string key)
{
string table = string.Empty;
string result = string.Empty;
foreach (char value in key)
{
if (table.IndexOf(value) == -1)
{
table += value;
result += value;
}
}
return result;
}
usage
Console.WriteLine(RemoveDuplicateChars("hello"));
Console.WriteLine(RemoveDuplicateChars("helo"));
Console.WriteLine(RemoveDuplicateChars("Crocodile"));
output
helo
helo
Crocdile

public boolean ifUnique(String toCheck){
String str="";
for(int i=0;i<toCheck.length();i++)
{
if(str.contains(""+toCheck.charAt(i)))
return false;
str+=toCheck.charAt(i);
}
return true;
}
EDIT:
You may also consider to omit the boundary case where toCheck is an empty string.

The following code works:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
isUniqueChart("text");
Console.ReadKey();
}
static Boolean isUniqueChart(string text)
{
if (text.Length == 0 || text.Length > 256)
{
Console.WriteLine(" The text is empty or too larg");
return false;
}
Boolean[] char_set = new Boolean[256];
for (int i = 0; i < text.Length; i++)
{
int val = text[i];//already found this char in the string
if (char_set[val])
{
Console.WriteLine(" The text is not unique");
return false;
}
char_set[val] = true;
}
Console.WriteLine(" The text is unique");
return true;
}

If the string has only lower case letters (a-z) or only upper case letters (A-Z) you can use a very optimized O(1) solution.Also O(1) space.
c++ code :
bool checkUnique(string s){
if(s.size() >26)
return false;
int unique=0;
for (int i = 0; i < s.size(); ++i) {
int j= s[i]-'a';
if(unique & (1<<j)>0)
return false;
unique=unique|(1<<j);
}
return true;
}

Remove Duplicates in entire Unicode Range
Not all characters can be represented by a single C# char. If you need to take into account combining characters and extended unicode characters, you need to:
parse the characters using StringInfo
normalize the characters
find duplicates amongst the normalized strings
Code to remove duplicate characters:
We keep track of the entropy, storing the normalized characters (each character is a string, because many characters require more than 1 C# char). In case a character (normalized) is not yet stored in the entropy, we append the character (in specified form) to the output.
public static class StringExtension
{
public static string RemoveDuplicateChars(this string text)
{
var output = new StringBuilder();
var entropy = new HashSet<string>();
var iterator = StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator(text);
while (iterator.MoveNext())
{
var character = iterator.GetTextElement();
if (entropy.Add(character.Normalize()))
{
output.Append(character);
}
}
return output.ToString();
}
}
Unit Test:
Let's test a string that contains variations on the letter A, including the Angstrom sign Å. The Angstrom sign has unicode codepoint u212B, but can also be constructed as the letter A with the diacritic u030A. Both represent the same character.
// ÅÅAaA
var input = "\u212BA\u030AAaA";
// ÅAa
var output = input.RemoveDuplicateChars();
Further extensions could allow for a selector function that determines how to normalize characters. For instance the selector (x) => x.ToUpperInvariant().Normalize() would allow for case-insensitive duplicate removal.

public static bool CheckUnique(string str)
{
int accumulator = 0;
foreach (int asciiCode in str)
{
int shiftedBit = 1 << (asciiCode - ' ');
if ((accumulator & shiftedBit) > 0)
return false;
accumulator |= shiftedBit;
}
return true;
}