Find count of repeated letters (sequence)

Sir,

How to find the no. of repeated sequence (letters) in the given sentence.

for example, a="I want THAAAAAT APPPPPLE ):):): totally unprepared";

The No. of repeated sequences are: 3

ie.,

1. THAAAAAT

2. APPPPPLE

3. ):):):

thanks

[Walter Roberson]

'THAAAAAT' is not a repeated sequence. It contains a repeated sequence.

Could you confirm that the sequences can be more than just adjacent letters such as the A's in THAAAAAT ? The '):' repeating as a unit is intended to be noticed?

[Jothi]

sir,

Repeated sequence is not an adjacent letter. It can be any letter or special character continuously repeated more than two times.

ie., In the word THAAAAAT a letter A is continuously repeated more than two times.

similarly, In the word APPPPPLE a letter P is continuously repeated more than two times.

how to find this.

thank you.

[Walter Roberson]

Your #3, ):):): does not have continuously repeated symbols.

If the repeated sequences are to be identified, then why would all of THAAAAAT be output, and not just AAAAA ?

[Jothi]

:) this symbol indicates one type of emotion symbol (positive emotion).

I don't want the output as string just find the no. of repeated sequences are appeared in the given sentence. ie.,

input is,

a="I want THAAAAAT APPPPPLE ):):): totally unprepared";

output is,

No. of repeated sequences are: 3

Answer 1

[Cedric]

Try to understand the following and fine-tune it to your needs:

 n = sum( diff([0, diff(a)==0]) == 1 )

In particular, evaluate

 diff(a)==0

and see how your problem actually translates into counting clusters of the outcome of diff(a)==0.

[Cedric]

Just to be sure, the repeated sequences are:

 AAAAA
 PPPPP
 ll                         (in 'totally')

is that right? If so, then my answer works.

[Jothi]

sir,

the repeated sequences are more than two.

AAAAA

PPPPP

ll - not more than two (in 'totally')

thank you sir.

[Cedric]

You seem to indicate that one repeated sequence is '):'. As far as I am concerned, there is no simple generic solution if you want to detect repeated, arbitrary patterns. To illustrate,

 'AABBCCDDEEFFAABBCCDDEEFF'

Here, repeated patterns are

'AA', 'BB', .., 'FF', 'AABB', 'BBCC', .., 'AABBCC', 'BBCCDD', .., 
'AABBCCDD', 'BBCCDDEE', .., 'AABBCCDDEEFF'

Using regular expressions, we can probably get some solution but it will be prohibitively time consuming.

[Sean de Wolski]

Yeah, every emoticon would have to be predefined. For the chatroom we use here there are even word emoticons like (b) which inserts a frosty beer mug or (ply) which inserts an image of a playing card.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

a='I want THAAAAAT APPPPPLE ):):): totally unprepared';

regexp(a, '(.+)\1{2,}', 'match')

ans =
  1×3 cell array
    'AAAAA'    'PPPPP'    '):):):'