Using StringSplit and DeleteCases for visualizing word lengths in Mathematica’s BarChart

[Splendid Digital Solutions]

Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of an AI language model and is intended for informational purposes only. Please verify any technical details before implementation.

**Introduction**

In data analysis and text processing, breaking down text and analyzing word lengths can offer unique insights. Mathematica (Wolfram Language) provides powerful tools for this, allowing us to easily split text, calculate word lengths, and visualize data using `BarChart`. In this article, we’ll explore how to split a sentence into words, handle empty strings that appear due to consecutive delimiters, calculate word lengths, and plot these lengths in a `BarChart`.

By the end, you’ll understand how to use Mathematica’s functions `StringSplit`, `DeleteCases`, and `StringLength` to clean and process text data, then display it visually.

—

**Step-by-Step Code Breakdown**

We’ll use the sentence “A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away” to illustrate the process. Here’s the complete code we’ll analyze:

“`mathematica
BarChart[
StringLength /@ DeleteCases[StringSplit[“A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away”, {“,”, ” “}], “”]
]
`“

 

Let’s examine each part.

—

### 1. Splitting the Text with `StringSplit`

In Mathematica, the `StringSplit` function allows you to divide a string into separate components (or “tokens”) based on specified delimiters. Here’s how it works in our code:

“`mathematica
StringSplit[“A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away”, {“,”, ” “}]
“`

– **Purpose**: Here, `StringSplit` takes the string `”A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away”` and splits it into words based on the delimiters provided, which are `”,”` (comma) and `” “` (space).
– **Outcome**: The function will produce a list of words, but it may include empty strings where multiple delimiters occur consecutively. For example, `”far,far”` will result in an empty string between `”far”` and `”far”` due to the comma-space combination.

After this operation, we get the following list:

“`plaintext
{“A”, “long”, “time”, “ago”, “”, “in”, “a”, “galaxy”, “far”, “far”, “away”}
“`

Notice the empty string `””` in the fifth position due to the consecutive delimiters `”, “`.

—

### 2. Removing Empty Strings with `DeleteCases`

To avoid visualizing meaningless empty strings, we use `DeleteCases` to remove them from our list. The code for this part is:

“`mathematica
DeleteCases[StringSplit[“A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away”, {“,”, ” “}], “”]
“`

– **Purpose**: `DeleteCases` takes the list generated by `StringSplit` and removes any elements that match `””` (empty strings).
– **Outcome**: After applying `DeleteCases`, the list is cleaned, and we’re left with only meaningful words.

The resulting list is:

“`plaintext
{“A”, “long”, “time”, “ago”, “in”, “a”, “galaxy”, “far”, “far”, “away”}
“`

This cleaned list is now ready for further analysis.

—

### 3. Calculating Word Lengths with `StringLength`

To create a bar chart of word lengths, we need to calculate the length of each word in the cleaned list. We use `StringLength` and map it over each word with the `Map` operator `/@`, like this:

“`mathematica
StringLength /@ {“A”, “long”, “time”, “ago”, “in”, “a”, “galaxy”, “far”, “far”, “away”}
“`

– **Purpose**: `StringLength` calculates the number of characters in each word.
– **Outcome**: We get a list of numbers representing the lengths of each word.

The resulting list of lengths is:

“`plaintext
{1, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 6, 3, 3, 4}
“`

Each number corresponds to the length of a word in the cleaned list.

—

### 4. Visualizing the Word Lengths with `BarChart`

Finally, we use `BarChart` to create a visual representation of the word lengths. The complete code looks like this:

“`mathematica
BarChart[
StringLength /@ DeleteCases[StringSplit[“A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away”, {“,”, ” “}], “”],
AxesOrigin -> {1.35, 0}
]
“`

In this line:

– **`BarChart[…]`** takes the list of word lengths and displays each value as a bar.
– **`AxesOrigin -> {1.35, 0}`** moves the axes’ intersection to start slightly right of the origin at `x = 1.35`, ensuring that all bars are visible without overlap or alignment issues.

The resulting chart provides a visual comparison of word lengths, showing which words are longer or shorter at a glance.

—

**Conclusion**

Using Mathematica’s `StringSplit`, `DeleteCases`, and `StringLength` functions in combination with `BarChart`, we can effectively process text, clean unwanted data, and visualize meaningful information. This approach is useful in text analytics, enabling quick insights into word distributions and patterns within any string.

In this example, we handled the challenge of consecutive delimiters by removing empty strings, ensuring that our bar chart reflects only actual words. This process demonstrates the flexibility and power of Mathematica for text processing and data visualization.

By mastering these functions, you’ll be able to create visualizations of text data for a wide range of applications, from simple word analyses to more complex text-based insights.

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