UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How do you write a script that counts the number of times a word appears in a file and output it?

Original:

Code:

ID1     SMARCB1;Adil;Jon
ID2     Jon;Annie;Mei
ID3     Adil;Spaghetti;NBA
ID4     Raptors;wethenorth;SMARCB1
ID5     SMARCB1;wethenorth

Objective:

Code:

SMARCB1: 3
Adil: 2
Jon: 2
wethenorth: 2
Annie: 1
Mei: 1
Spaghetti: 1
NBA: 1
Raptors: 1

One approach might be to...
1) get rid of the ID markers on each line
perhaps a cut or awk command
2) get each name on its own line
perhaps translate the ; to a carriage return
3) sort and count

The first thing you need to clarify is: what is a "word"? This is not as obvious as it looks: "SMARCB1" in your example is seemingly one, but is "SMARCB1-Jon" also one word or is it two words, connected by a dash?

Usually it is a matter of some characters continuing a word and others ending one. In your example obviously all characters (small and caps) as well as digits continue a word, the semicolon (and blanks, probably) ends one.

Once you have this defined clearly write a filter which inserts line breaks at every "non-continuing character" and sort, then simply count.

You might wonder why - instead of providing some command line ready to use we are a bit vague about what to do: first, this is the beginners forum. We do not want to spoil your joy of learning the trade yourself. Therefore we give pointers to guide but won't spoon-feed you solutions. Second, what you present looks suspiciously like homework. If it is: there is a special forum for this and your thread can get transferred there if this is the case. Ask any moderator and we will gladly assist you. Still, there are special rules in place in this forum and you will have to hand in the necessary questionnaire subsequently.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

try:

Code:

awk -F '[ ;]' '{for (i=2; i,=NF; i++) {arr[$(i)]++}}  
                   END{for (i in arr){print i ":", arr[i]}}'  infile > outfile

to start with.

<= instead of ,= in for loop control

Got Perl?
Alphabetically sorted.

Code:

perl -nlaF'[;\s]+' -e '
    map{$words{$_}++;} @F[1..$#F];
    END{for(sort keys %words){print "$_: $words{$_}"}}
' lipidil.file