Using len for text but discarding spaces in the count

Question

So, I am trying to create a program which counts the number of characters in a string which the user inputs, but I want to discard any spaces that the user enters.

def main():
    full_name = str(input("Please enter in a full name: ")).split(" ")

    for x in full_name:
        print(len(x))


main()

Using this, I can get the number of the characters in each word, without spaces, but I don't know how to add each number together and print the total.

Compile

Why are you splitting the phrase? – Robison

I thought I would split them and then count them up that way. This allows me to count it without the spaces, but I realize now that it's not very efficient to do that, lol. – Compile

Answer 1

Count the length and subtract the number of spaces:

>>> full_name = input("Please enter in a full name: ")
Please enter in a full name: john smith
>>> len(full_name) - full_name.count(' ')
9
>>> len(full_name)

Efrenefron

Brilliant! As you can see, I'm a beginner programmer. Thanks for the tips! – Compile

@Izento: no sweat! Since you are new to SO, please consider accepting – Efrenefron

Answer 2

Use sum with a generator expression:

>>> text = 'foo  bar  spam'
>>> sum(len(x) for x in text.split())
10

Or str.translate with len:

>>> from string import whitespace
>>> len(text.translate(None, whitespace)) #Handles all types of whitespace characters
10

Rhyme

This requires the creation of new lists with each splited chunk, which has O(n) space complexity. Would be better to subtract the number of spaces from the total length (no extra space + O(n) time). I like the translate idea, though – Efrenefron

Answer 3

Why can't you just do:

>>> mystr = input("Please enter in a full name: ")
Please enter in a full name: iCodez wrote this
>>> len(mystr.replace(" ", ""))
15
>>> len(mystr)
17
>>>

This gets the length of the string minus the spaces.

Ginter

Answer 4

I can propose a few versions.

You can replace each space with an empty string and calculate the length:

len(mystr.replace(" ", ""))

You can calculate the length of the whole string and subtract the number of spaces:

len(mystr) - mystr.count(' ')

Or you can sum the lengths of all substrings after splitting the string with spaces:

sum(map(len, mystr.split(' ')))

Escuage

Answer 5

To count the number of characters excluding spaces, you can simply do:

>>> full_name = "John DOE"
>>> len(full_name) - full_name.count(' ')
7

Autocracy

Answer 6

Some code as close as possible to your original:

def main():
    full_name = input("Please enter in a full name: ").split()
    total = 0
    for x in full_name:
        total += len(x)
    print(total)

However, I think len(full_name) - full_name.count(' ') is better.

Retroversion

Answer 7

You can also do

sum(1 for c in s if c!=' ') 

Which avoids any unnecessary temporary string or list.

Oletta

Answer 8

Explained in comments

string1 = input ()

# just when the condition is true add 1 
res = sum(1 for c in string1 if c!=' ')

# it's shorter and still works
res2 = sum(c!=' ' for c in string1)

# summing ones may be more explicit but it's unnecessary
print(res, res2) 

c v s
3 3

[Program finished]

Mol

Answer 9

I tried this, it's a bit simple:

P = "What is going on "

S = " "

i = 0


while i < len(P) and P[i] != S:
    i += 1

print(len(P)-i)

Smirk

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Stack Overflow community. This question already has quite a few answers—including one that has been extensively validated by the community. Are you certain your approach hasn’t been given previously? If so, it would be useful to explain how your approach is different, under what circumstances your approach might be preferred, and/or why you think the previous answers aren’t sufficient. Can you kindly edit your answer to offer an explanation? – Haye

Answer 10

I also found that this works. I am a beginner programmer and I did not understand anything that was going on in the other explanations. I think that this might be a little easier to understand for a beginner beginner.

full_name = str(input("Please enter in your full name: "))
spaces = str(" ")
spaces_name = str(len(full_name) - len(spaces))

print("Your name " + full_name + " has " + spaces_name + "charictures")

Cybernetics

Hi Caleb and thanks for joining and answering, except I'm afraid the answer is incorrect so I'm going to have to mark it down. Your 'spaces' is always going to be a single space and hence, the len(" ") is always going to be 1 so you're simply subtracting one from the length of the entered name. If the name entered is "Madonna" or "Lee Harvey Oswald" for example, it'll be wrong. As an aside, you don't need str(" ") The " " is already a string so it's just spaces = " ". – Sherikasherill