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Daily Challenge #3 - Vowel Counter

Hope you’re ready for another challenge! Let’s get started with Day 3.

Today’s challenge is modified from user @jayeshcp on CodeWars.

Write a function that returns the number (count) of vowels in a given string. Letters considered as vowels are: a, i, e, o, and u. The function should be able to take all types of characters as input, including lower case letters, upper case letters, symbols, and numbers.

In this challenge, you should be able to efficiently ignore spaces and symbols and discern between capital and lowercase letters. Beginners can start with only lowercase letters and move up from there. It’ll definitely get you ready for tomorrow.

Happy coding!~


Thank you to CodeWars, who has licensed redistribution of this challenge under the 2-Clause BSD License!

Want to propose a challenge for a future post? Email yo+challenge@dev.to with your suggestions!

Top comments (88)

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alvaromontoro profile image
Alvaro Montoro • Edited

JavaScript:

f=s=>s.match(/[aeiou]/gi).length
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Demo on CodePen.

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ryansmith profile image
Ryan Smith • Edited

Nice solution, mine was similar in using regex match, but not as short. This one will error on a string without any vowels because match will return a null which doesn't have a length.

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alvaromontoro profile image
Alvaro Montoro • Edited

That's a good point. This could be avoided by checking if the result of the match is null and using an empty string instead. Something like this:

f=s=>(`${s}`.match(/[aeiou]/gi)||'').length;

I also used template literals before the match so numeric values or null would be process too... and now the code is even uglier than before :P

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kvharish profile image
K.V.Harish

Typo ${s}

f=s=>(`${s}`.match(/[aeiou]/gi)||'').length;
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alvaromontoro profile image
Alvaro Montoro • Edited

Good catch! I corrected it. Thank you for letting me know!

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taillogs profile image
Ryland G

I think this is the best solution if you're ok with regex.

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torianne02 profile image
Tori Crawford • Edited

Ruby

Long Solution (my first solution)

def getVowelCount(str)
  vowels = ["a", "e", "i", "o", "u"]
  count = 0
  str.downcase.split('').each do |char|
    vowels.each do |vowel|
      char == vowel ? count += 1 : count += 0
    end
  end 
  count
end

Short Solution (my refactored solution)

def getVowelCount(str)
  str.downcase.count("aeiou")
end
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databasesponge profile image
MetaDave 🇪🇺

It would be interesting to know if str.count("aeiouAEIOU") was faster, or if reordering the letters to try to get the most likely match first was better – e.g. str.count("eiaouEIAOU")

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taillogs profile image
Ryland G • Edited
const vowelString = 'whatever vowel string';
const count = [...(vowelString.toLowerCase())].map((letter) =>  [...'aeiou'].includes(letter) ? 1 : 0).reduce((aggr, curr) => aggr + curr);
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powerc9000 profile image
Clay Murray

[...'aeiou'].includes

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taillogs profile image
Ryland G

Fixed, thanks!

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gabriela profile image
Gabi

Hi, i loved this solution. Took me a bit to get my head around the use of reduce here and it's awesome. Thanks. I learned something nice today.

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blended_ideas profile image
Karthik RP • Edited

Cool., I didn't know we can use spread on a string. 👍🏻

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protium profile image
protium

Thinking the string as a Set with O(1) for look up operations: solution is O(n), where n = len(str)

def count_vowels(str):
    vowels = "aeiouAEIOU"
    count = 0
    for c in str:
        if c in vowels:
            count += 1
    return count;

JS lambda way

conat vowels = new Set("aeiouAEIOU");
const counVowels = input => [...input].reduce((total, current) => (total += vowels.has(current)), 0);
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aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel

My python solution!

def count_vowels(word):
    return len(l for l in word if l in "aeiou")
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coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander

Oh I've been waiting for this one all morning! Decided I wanted to go all out on this on!

  • Rust
  • TDD
  • AND a Live Stream!

Come check it out while I work my way through this challenge! I'm live now and about to get started!

twitch.tv/coreyja

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coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander

Here is my Rust solution all TDD'ed out!

#[macro_use]
extern crate lazy_static;

pub fn vowel_count(some_string: &str) -> usize {
    lazy_static! {
        static ref VOWELS: Vec<char> = vec!['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'];
    }

    some_string
        .to_ascii_lowercase()
        .chars()
        .filter(|c| VOWELS.contains(c))
        .count()
}

#[cfg(test)]
mod tests {
    use crate::vowel_count;

    #[test]
    fn it_works_with_an_empty_string() {
        assert_eq!(vowel_count(""), 0);
    }

    #[test]
    fn it_works_non_vowel_strings() {
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("d"), 0);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("drthpCVM  *&^"), 0);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("1234567890!@#$%^&*()--__+="), 0);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("NPlkv.,<>?/"), 0);
    }

    #[test]
    fn it_works_for_strings_of_just_vowels() {
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("a"), 1);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("A"), 1);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("AaeEiIoOuU"), 10);
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("eoiuioEAUIAEoieaiAoe"), 20);
    }

    #[test]
    fn it_works_for_mixed_strings() {
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("deadpool"), 4);
        assert_eq!(
            vowel_count("This is just a sentence! With some words and symbols #$%"),
            13
        );
        assert_eq!(vowel_count("TESTING OUT YELLING WITH ALL CAPS"), 9);
        assert_eq!(
            vowel_count("!@#      \nThis is THE MOST COMPLICATED test SoO farrrr"),
            12
        );
    }
}

I'm still live streaming as I type this out, but once I wrap up I'll post a link to the video here!

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coreyja profile image
Corey Alexander • Edited

Ahhh! :panic:

Turns out OBS didn't want to behave for me today, and split my stream into 2 and dies before I finished, but we got almost all of it recorded! Learnings for next stream!

Links to the video that recorded for the longest here

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bennypowers profile image
Benny Powers 🇮🇱🇨🇦
import { compose } from 'crocks';

const toLowerCase = s => s.toLowerCase();
const spread = s => [...s];
const length = xs => xs.length;
const included = xs => x => xs.includes(x);
const filter = p => xs => xs.filter(p);

const charIncludesCount = chars => compose(
  length,
  filter(included(toLowerCase(chars)),
  spread,
  toLowerCase
);

const vowelCount = charIncludesCount ('aeiou');
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shayaulman profile image
Shaya Ulman • Edited

Why not so simple as this (JS)...

const vowelsCounter = str => [...str].filter(l => 'aeiouAEIOU'.includes(l)).length;
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ryansmith profile image
Ryan Smith • Edited

Here is my try at it in JavaScript:

/**
 * Count the number of vowels in the input and return an integer.
 */
function countVowels (inputText) {
  // Create a regular expression that matches vowels. Look for all matches (g flag) and ignore case (i flag).
  const vowelRegularExpression = /[aeiou]/gi

  // Convert the input text to lower case and find the matches.
  const vowelMatches = inputText.match(vowelRegularExpression)

  // If there are matches, return the length of the match array. Otherwise, there were no matches, so return 0.
  return (vowelMatches ? vowelMatches.length : 0)
}
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robbitt07 profile image
robbitt07

Python regex example

import re
def num_vowels(s):
    return len(re.findall('[aeiou]', s))
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auroratide profile image
Timothy Foster • Edited

TI-Basic Calculator, where the string is in Ans:

sum(seq(0<inString("AEIOUaeiou",sub(Ans,I,1)),I,1,length(Ans

And yes you can omit ending parens, which helps saves some bytes (:

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kesprit profile image
kesprit

This is my solution in Swift (with an extension 😊) :

extension String {
    func numberOfVowels() -> Int {
        var count = 0
        let vowels: [Character] = ["a","e","i","o", "u", "y"]

        self.lowercased().forEach { char in
            if vowels.contains(char) {
                count += 1
            }
        }

        return count
    }
}
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willsmart profile image
willsmart • Edited

JS one that's probably pretty speedy

vowelCount = string => {
  let count = 0,
    i;
  for (i = string.length; i > 0; ) {
    const c = string.charCodeAt(--i) & ~0x20; // that's a tilde btw
    count+=Number(c < 70 ? c == 69 || c == 65 : c == 73 || c == 79 || c == 85)
  }
  return count;
};

Note that:

{E:'E'.charCodeAt(0), A:'A'.charCodeAt(0), I:'I'.charCodeAt(0), O:'O'.charCodeAt(0), U:'U'.charCodeAt(0)}

-> {E:69, A:65, I:73, O:79, U:85}

and vowels go pretty much eaiou in terms of how common they are in english.

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jckuhl profile image
Jonathan Kuhl • Edited

JavaScript, using reduce:

function countVowels(string) {
    const vowels = 'aeiouAEIOU';
    return string.split('').reduce((counter, current) => {
        if(vowels.indexOf(current) != -1) {
            if(counter[current]) {
                counter[current] += 1;
            } else {
                counter[current] = 1;
            }
        }
        return counter;
    }, {});
}

console.log(countVowels('How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?'));

// { o: 11, u: 7, a: 2, i: 1 }
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kerrishotts profile image
Kerri Shotts
const charCounter = ({strToCount = "", chars = ""} = {}) => {
    const charsToCount = chars.toLowerCase();
    return Array.from(strToCount.toLowerCase())
        .reduce((acc, candidate) => acc += charsToCount.includes(candidate) 
        ? 1 : 0, 0)
}

const countVowels= strToCount => charCounter({strToCount, chars: "aeiou"});

assert(countVowels("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.") === 11);
assert(countVowels("Hello") === 2);
assert(countVowels("Xyl") === 0);
assert(countVowels("aeiouAEIOU") === 10);