# Found Senryu (#224)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 13, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938 "2009-11-13T20:16:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danmcb)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938/1 "2009-11-13T20:16:07Z")

</div>

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## Found Senryu (#224)

Ya’atay Rubyists,

This week’s quiz comes from Martin DeMello:

Scan a text for runs  
of seventeen syllables  
formed from complete words

Have Fun!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danmcb)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938/2 "2009-11-17T12:16:53Z")

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On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Daniel M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> Scan a text for runs  
> of seventeen syllables  
> formed from complete words

Sorry, this was underspecified (I was hoping that the example would  
suffice, and I needn’t break the purity of the quiz post :)). The  
seventeen syllables should, for full correctness, also be able to be  
broken into 5/7/5 in traditional “internet haiku” fashion.

martin

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danmcb)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938/3 "2010-03-10T05:41:11Z")

</div>

The quiz this week has solutions from Martin DeMello and wkm.

wkm’s solution uses the Lingua::EN package[1](http://www.pressure.to/ruby/) to count syllables.  
Installing Lingua::EN was somewhat of a challenge. I was only able to  
install it without the dictionary and run using the guessing library,  
hopefully others may have better luck.

When the program runs the first step is to read in the documents,  
extracting the words and syllable counts. Whenever a word’s syllables  
are looked up the results are cached to save time on looking up common  
words. Next, this list of words with their syllable counts is iterated  
over with all possible word offsets to find runs of 17 syllables. When  
such a run is found the words that comprise it are printed out.

There is, however, one issue with wkm’s solution. It does not check to  
see if the 17 syllables split on word boundaries into 5-7-5 syllable  
chunks. This causes the program to greatly over-estimate how many 17  
syllable runs there are in the text.

Martin’s solution uses uses the cmu pronouncing dictionary directly.  
The entire dictionary is loaded so that words can be looked up easily.  
The text is then iterated through, counting up the number of  
syllables. When a run of words totals 17 syllables it is checked to  
see that the fifth and twelfth syllable boundaries are also on word  
boundaries.

If the number of syllables for a section is greater than 17 the first  
word in the section is removed and its syllables removed from the  
count. This allows checking of all possible runs of 17 syllables  
without having to iterate through the text multiple times. When  
running Martin’s solution against Wodehouse’s “Right Ho, Jeeves” it  
produces many good excerpts, but when run solely against those  
excerpts does not print them out. I haven’t been able to find the  
cause of this issue, but as they say, let’s leave that as an exercise  
to the reader.

Thank you Martin and wkm for your solutions to this week’s quiz!

Found Senryu (#224) - Solutions[2](http://rubyquiz.strd6.com/quizzes/224.tar.gz)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@danmcb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danmcb)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 12:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/found-senryu-224/178938/4 "2009-11-17T12:59:36Z")

</div>

Here’s my solution (code both inlined below and attached). It uses the  
cmu pronouncing dictionary directly, since I didn’t know about  
Lingua::EN. The code is inefficient in theory, but runs fast enough 🙂

Since there were way too many results (most of them uninteresting), I  
added the refinement that the senryu should be a complete sentence  
(the word just before it, and the last word, should both end with a  
full stop). I used Wodehouse’s “Right Ho, Jeeves”  
[[Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - Free Ebook](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10554)] to test it; these are three of  
the more amusing ones it found:

You can’t get away  
from the facts. Somebody stole  
her from me at Cannes.

"How? Could Lloyd George do  
it, could Winston do it, could  
Baldwin do it? No.

“What?” I staggered, and  
the left pedal came up and  
caught me on the shin.

# 

* * *

# get dictionary from [The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary](http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict)

text = IO.read(ARGV[0]).split(" ")  
dict = IO.readlines(‘cmudict.0.7a’)  
$syllables = {}

dict.each {|line|  
word, pron = line.split(/\s+/, 2)  
syl = pron.gsub(/[^\d]/, ‘’).length  
$syllables[word] = syl  
}

senryu = []  
count = 0  
prev = ‘’

text.each do |word|  
w = word.upcase.gsub(/\W/, ‘’)  
syl = $syllables[w]  
if syl  
senryu.push([word, syl])  
count += syl  
if count == 17  
five = twelve = nil  
n = 0  
senryu.each\_with\_index {|(w, i), ix|  
n += i  
five = ix if (n == 5)  
twelve = ix if (n == 12)  
}  
if five and twelve and senryu[-1][0] =~ /.$/ and prev =~ /.$/  
[0…five, (five+1)…twelve, (twelve+1)…-1].each {|i|  
puts senryu[i].map(&:first).join(" ")  
}  
puts  
end  
end  
if count \>= 17  
prev, i = senryu.shift  
count -= i  
end  
else  
senryu = []  
count = 0  
end  
end