String compression program not working [duplicate]

Question

I'm trying to create a program that condenses a string to how many characters it has. Just to give my non-programming friends an idea of how compression can work.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to put the same alphabets into a single arrays and other same sets of alphabets in other respective arrays.

The code is not complete, as I lost a lot of data from my HDD and this was all I had backed up on Google Drive. Can anyone please help me with this? Thanks!

var string = "twinkle twinkle little star how i wonder what you are up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky twinkle twinkle little star"

var brokenString = string.split("")

var counter = 0;
for (i = 1; i < brokenString.length; i++) {
  while (brokenString[counter] === brokenString[i]) {
    //var eval("array" + counter) = new Array(brokenString[i])
    var array = {
      counter:  brokenString[i]
    }
  counter++
  }
}

console.log(array)

I don't think new Array(brokenString) does what you think it does. It creates a new array with one element, and that element is the brokenString array. — Barmar
– Barmar, Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 0:05
Actually everything till that line works exactly as I intended it to. It's the loop that I can't get to work. It creates an element out of every single character of the original string and puts it into an array called brokenString — Arhum Ishtiaq
– Arhum Ishtiaq, Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 0:06
Never mind, now I see that you're not assigning new Array(brokenString) to anything. What's the purpose of that line? brokenString is already an array, calling new Array() doesn't do anything to it. — Barmar
– Barmar, Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 0:08
What's the purpose of var array? You're creating that object, but not doing anything with it. — Barmar
– Barmar, Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 0:10
Yes, I realized that the new Array(brokenString) is useless. And now I understand your second comment as well. Thank you for that! — Arhum Ishtiaq
– Arhum Ishtiaq, Commented Jun 24, 2016 at 0:12

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-24 00:16:56Z

1

Use an object whose keys are the characters and values are the count of those characters.

var string = "twinkle twinkle little star how i wonder what you are up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky twinkle twinkle little star"

var letters = {};
for (var i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
  var char = string[i];
  if (char in letters) {
    letters[char]++;
  } else {
    letters[char] = 1;
  }
}

console.log(letters);

answered Jun 24, 2016 at 0:16

Barmar

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1 Comment

Arhum Ishtiaq Over a year ago

Sir @Barmar, thank you so much. I'm sorry that you had to work through an improperly structured question and its code but thank you for your help! If I may ask, is there any resource in particular that you can refer me to so that I can get better at JS? I've already done online practices at codecademy and SoloLearn, which don't really teach much. Would really appreciate your input in this matter. Thanks again!

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