Dfyjkt

I'm trying to write a very simple script that takes two words from STDIN and outputs TRUE if they're anagrams and FALSE if not. My main issue is that if the two words aren't anagrams (this is the final "else" statement in the script), the output looks like:

Sorry, that's not an anagram pair
Sorry, that's not an anagram pair

where I just want:

Sorry, that's not an anagram pair

Other, more minor issues for the especially generous:

• I know what the FALSE values are for Perl, but I can't get the script to print FALSE by, for example, setting a variable to '' or 0, etc. or saying "return ''". Ideally, I wouldn't have to put "print TRUE/FALSE" in the script at all.


• I put in the last elsif statement in the script to see if it would affect the printing twice problem. It didn't, and now I'm curious why my m// expression doesn't work. It's supposed to find pairs that are identical except that one has more whitespace than the other.

Here's the script! I'm sorry it's so long - again, the problem is at the very end with the final "else" statement. Many thanks!!!

#To Run: Type start.pl on the command line.
#The script should prompt you to enter a word or phrase.
#Once you've done that, it'll prompt you for another one.
#Then you will be told if the two terms are anagrams or not.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

#I have to use this to make STDIN work. IDK why.

$|=1;

#variables

my $aWord;
my $bWord;
my $word;
my $sortWord;
my $sortWords;
my @words;
my %anaHash;

print "nReady to play the anagram game? Excellent.nnType your first word or phrase, then hit Enter.nn";

$aWord = <STDIN>;
chomp $aWord;

print "nnThanks! Now type your second word or phrase and hit Enter.nn";

$bWord = <STDIN>;
chomp $bWord;

#This foreach loop performs the following tasks:

#1. Pushes the two words from STDIN into an array (unsure if this is really necessary)
#2. lowercases everything and removes all characters except for letters & spaces
#3. splits both words into characters, sorts them alphabetically, then joins the sorted letters into a single "word"
#4.pushes the array into a hash

@words = ($bWord, $aWord);
foreach $word (@words) 
 $word =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
 $word =~ s/[^a-z ]//ig;
 $sortWord = join '', sort(split(//, $word));
 push @$anaHash$sortWord, $word;


#This foreach loop tries to determine if the word pairs are anagrams or not.

foreach $sortWords (values %anaHash) 

It's useful to print out the contents of %anaHash after you've finished building it, but before you start examining it. Using the words "foo" and "bar", I get this result using Data::Dumper.

$VAR1 = 
 'abr' => [
 'bar'
 ],
 'foo' => [
 'foo'
 ]
 ;

So the hash has two keys. And as you loop round all of the keys in the hash, you'll get the message twice (once for each key).

I'm not really sure what the hash is for here. I don't think it's necessary. I think that you need to:

1. Read in the two words


2. Convert the words to a canonical format


3. Check if the two strings are the same

Simplified, your code would look like this:

print 'Give me a word: ';
chomp(my $word1 = <STDIN>);
print 'Give me another word: ';
chomp(my $word2 = <STDIN>);

# convert to lower case
$word1 = lc $word1;
$word2 = lc $word2;

# remove non-letters
$word1 =~ s/[^a-z]//g;
$word2 =~ s/[^a-z]//g;

# sort letters
$word1 = join '', sort split //, $word1;
$word2 = join '', sort split //, $word2;

if ($word1 eq $word2) 
 # you have an anagram
 else 
 # you don't

My final answer, thanks so much to Dave and @zdim! I'm so happy I could die.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use feature qw(say);

#I have to use this to make STDIN work. IDK why.

$|=1;

#declare variables below

print "First word?n";

$aWord = <STDIN>;
chomp $aWord;

print "Second word?n";

$bWord = <STDIN>;
chomp $bWord;

#clean up input
$aWord =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
$bWord =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
$aWord =~ s/[^a-z ]//ig;
$bWord =~ s/[^a-z ]//ig;

#if the two inputs are identical, print FALSE and exit
if ($aWord eq $bWord) 
 say "nnFALSE: Your phrases are identical!n";
 exit;


#split each word by character, sort characters alphabetically, join characters

$aSortWord = join '', sort(split(//, $aWord));
$bSortWord = join '', sort(split(//, $bWord));

#if the sorted characters match, you have an anagram
#if not, you don't

if ($aSortWord eq $bSortWord) 
 say "nnTRUE: Your two terms are anagrams!";

else 
 say "nnFALSE: Your two terms are not acronyms.";