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wc
6.2.0.2

Counting Words

For this homework set, you will design a Rust version of Unix’s wc.

The objective of this homework is to deepen your knowledge of Rust’s I/O system and its iterators.

Deadline Friday 30 January NOON.

wc

Your version of wc consumes a file name on the command line and produces a single line with three numbers followed by the file name:

    $ wc 1.scrbl

         73     399    2776 1.scrbl

    $ wc 2.scrbl

         73     392    2722 2.scrbl

The first number is the number of lines in the specified file, the second the number of "words", and the third the number of bytes.

Following historical convention, you may assume that a word as a maximal string of characters delimited by <space>, <tab>, or <newline>. You may also assume ASCII input.

Compare the time that your version takes for "counting" the bible to the one that the built-in version of wc:

    $ /usr/bin/time wc bible-plain-text.txt

    92870  969905 5371778 bible-plain-text.txt

        0.03 real         0.03 user         0.00 sys

That is, on a simple Mac notebook, wc takes .03s to read and count the entire ASCII text of the bible. Keep the difference within an order of magnitude.