Project 1: Enhanced wc program

Educational Objectives: Apply C++ knowledge for problem solving; experience text processing techniques; experience using the makefile to organize and compile applications.

Statement of Work: Develop an enhanced wc program that collects the usage statistics of characters and words in a file (redirected as the standard input).

Project Requirement:

The wc program is a UNIX utility that counts the numbers of lines, words, and characters in a text file. Try "wc < filename" in a UNIX system to see how wc behaves. In this assignment, you will develop an enhanced wc program that no only counts the numbers of lines, words, and characters, but also collects (and outputs) the usage statistics of characters, words, and numbers in the file.

The program should read the input until it reaches the end, keeping track of the numbers of lines, words, and characters while counting the number of times each character/word is used. A word can either be an identifier or a number. An identifier is defined as a letter followed by a sequence of letters or digits('a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', or '0'..'9'). Identifiers are case insensitive ("AA00", "Aa00", "aA00", and "aa00" are considered the same). A number is defined as a sequence of digits ('0'..'9') that are not in an identifier. Different sequences represent different numbers. For example, number "001" is different from number "1". Identifiers are separated by non-letter and non-digit characters. Numbers are separated by words or other non-letter and non-digit characters.

Your program should record the number of times each identifier/number/character happens. It should first output the number of lines, words, and characters in the file. After that, it should output up to five most used characters, up to five most used identifiers, and up to five most used numbers as well as the number of times these characters/identifiers/numbers are used. Since identifiers are case insensitive, the program only outputs identifiers with lower case letters. The characters, numbers and identifiers should be outputted in the descending order based on the number of times they are used. When two characters happen the same number of times, the character with a smaller ASCII value should be considered as being used more frequently. When two identifiers (or numbers) happen the same number of times, the identifier (number) that occurs earlier in the input should be considered as being used more frequently. An example executable (for the linprog machines) 'proj1.x' is provided in the supplied program files. You should make the outputs of your program the same as those of 'proj1.x'. When printing characters, use '\t' for tab and '\n' for newline. All other letters should be outputted normally as they are.

Deliverables: Turn in files proj1.cpp and makefile in a single tar file online via Canvas. When the two files (proj1.cpp and makefile) are placed in the same directory on linprog, type 'make' should produce the executable 'proj1.x'.

Grading:

• Type 'make' in the subdirectory containing your submitted files should produce the executable proj1.x. If the program or makefile has any kind of (compiling) errors, no more than 10 points will be awarded. A program written in a language other than C++ will receive 0 point.
• proj1.x is successfully produced (15 points).
• proj1.x outputs line, word, and character counts correctly for simple small files (up to 2 lines, 10 words, 50 characters) (30 points).
• proj1.x outputs character usage correctly for simple small files (10 points).
• proj1.x outputs identifier usage correctly for simple small files (10 points).
• proj1.x outputs number usage correctly for simple small files (10 points).
• proj1.x outputs line, word, and character counts correctly for any file. The program earns these points only after it passes all testings with small files. (10 points).
• proj1.x outputs character usage correctly for any file. The program earns these points only after it passes all testings with small files. (5 points).
• proj1.x outputs identifier usage correctly for any file. The program earns these points only after it passes all testings with small files. (5 points).
• proj1.x outputs number usage correctly for any file. The program earns these points only after it passes all testings with small files. (5 points).

Extra credits:

• The first student who reports a new bug in the provided 'proj1.x' will get an extra of 5 points for the assignment.

Hints:

• You can assume that the total number of different words used in a file is less than 25000 and the number of characters in a word is less than 200.
• Due to our own definition of word, our program's word count may be different from the word count from wc (line count and character count should be the same).
• You can start by counting the usage of characters, and outputting the most used characters. The same logic can be applied to count and output the usage of identifiers and numbers.
• You should make sure that your program produces exactly the same output as the provided proj1.x for all testing files provided. It would be a good idea to create a few testing files of your own. In grading, more testing cases will be used.

Miscellaneous:

• All programs handed in will be checked by automatic plagiarism detection software.