Question

Using names.txt (right click and ‘Save Link/Target As…’), a 46K text file containing over five-thousand first names, begin by sorting it into alphabetical order. Then working out the alphabetical value for each name, multiply this value by its alphabetical position in the list to obtain a name score.

For example, when the list is sorted into alphabetical order, COLIN, which is worth 3 + 15 + 12 + 9 + 14 = 53, is the 938th name in the list. So, COLIN would obtain a score of 938 53 = 49714.

What is the total of all the name scores in the file?

I am getting 863833348 but the correct answer is 871198282. I am not sure what is wrong, I have tried all things but could not figure out the problem.

Code:

public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {

    String alphabet="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
    Pattern testRegEx=Pattern.compile("[^\\\"]\\w+[^\\\",]");

    String line;
    String filePath="//Users//painkillerfff//Documents//names.txt";
    BufferedReader readTextFile=new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filePath));

    List<String> nameList=new ArrayList<String>();
    while((line=readTextFile.readLine())!=null){
        //System.out.println(line);
        Matcher matcher=testRegEx.matcher(line);
        while(matcher.find()){
            nameList.add(matcher.group());
            //System.out.println(matcher.group());
        }
    }
    Collections.sort(nameList);

    long sumOfWords=0;
    long namePoint=0;
    long nameRank=1;
    for(String name: nameList){
        namePoint=0;
        for(int i=0;i<name.length();i++){
            namePoint+=alphabet.indexOf(name.charAt(i))+1;
        }
        namePoint=namePoint*nameRank;
        sumOfWords+=namePoint;
        nameRank++;
    }
    System.out.println("The Total Points is: "+sumOfWords);
}

Answer 1

Your regexp is flawed somehow. A count of commas shows there are 5163 names, yet you post there are 5130.

Help me understand the regexp and we’ll probably figure it out.

This is my version – no regexp needed.

    while ((line = readTextFile.readLine()) != null) {
        sb.append(line);
    }
    line = sb.toString();
    line = line.replace("\"", "");
    String[] a = line.split(",");
    System.out.println(a.length);

Of course you should use real variable names, not a 😉

EDIT – I changed your regexp to

    Pattern testRegEx = Pattern.compile("\\w+");

and it returned 5163 names.