Question

I have this problem to solve

There is an input word from user which has been formed from two different words like

AppleCake or BrownPie

Now we need to develop a program which will take this input and match it against a library of words and break the word into it’s meaningful parts i-e Apple and Cake

Input:AppleCake

Output:This input has two words Apple and Cake

Input: RedGrapesWine

Output: This Input has three words Red, Grapes and Wine

My question is:

How should I start working on this problem?

Can anyone help me with pseudoCode/ Steps towards its solution?

Answer 1

A very simple approach that works only if you have little number of words is to iterate through the words list and try to match word by word.

This is a very basic example (does not handle case, nor multiple occurrences of word or whatever), but it shows you how to do:

String input = readFromUser();
String[] dictionary = new String[] { "Apple", "Cake" };
List<String> found = new ArrayList<>();
for (String word : dictionary) {
    int index = input.indexOf(word);
    if (index >= 0) {
        input = input.substring(0, index) + input.substring(index + word.length());
        found.add(word);
    }
}
System.out.println("Found " + found.size() + " words: " + found);

This is very simple approach since its time consuming.

Another approach would be to have a Trie and navigate it until you find the right word (should be a better approach).