Count instances of a word and Note that

Posted by Solara on Thu 27 Feb 2025 12:51 AM — 7 posts, 8,812 views.

Solara USA Thu 27 Feb 2025 12:51 AM #0

Game text: "A room with a grinning revenant, a fragile-looking revenant, two large revenants and a dried-out revenant."

I'd like to be able to get a count of the number of revenants and have it replace that long sentence with one simple text "5 revenants".

The game can have one, two, three, up to 6 of a mob with different descriptions.

I've been reading the boards and it seems Lua gmatch is the way to go, but I can't work it out with my very basic understanding of triggers.

I guess I would set a trigger to capture the text 'A room with', but not sure what else needs to be done.

Thanks!

Edit: okay I have this so far. Triggers on "^A room with (.+)"

Revsroom = "%1"

local count = 0
for word in string.gmatch (Revsroom, "revenant") do
count = count +1
end

Note (count.." revenants")

I just need to figure out how to add to the count when it has the text 2 revenants or 3 revenants.

Adding this:

for word in string.gmatch (Revsroom, "two revenants") do
count = count +2
end

doesn't seem to work. It seems capturing 'revenant' in 'revenants' counts as 1

Changed it to this and it works now:

for word in string.gmatch (Revsroom, "two") do
count = count +1
end

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sat 01 Mar 2025 05:19 AM #1

Hmm, this doesn't allow for "three" does it?

Can you post more examples of the sort of text you receive? (eg. other mobs, different numbers of them).

Solara USA Sat 01 Mar 2025 06:28 AM #2

Oh I have more entries for 3 and 4, I just didn't include it.

I figured it out reading the forum and looking at other examples. I figured I'd keep this post up for others if they had similar situations.'

The revenants have one adjective descriptions, so it'd be "a bleach-boned revenant", or "two stinking revenants".

The lizardman have 3 adjective descriptions, so it'd be "a smirking green-skinned male lizardman" or "two smirking green-skinned male lizardmans".

RoomLook = "%1"
local revcount = 0
local lizcount = 0

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "revenant") do
revcount = revcount +1
end

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "two .* revenants") do
revcount = revcount +1
end 

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "three .* revenants") do
revcount = revcount +2
end

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "four .* revenants") do
revcount = revcount +3
end

if revcount > 1 then
ColourNote ("yellow", "black", "-"..revcount.."- Revs")
elseif revcount == 1 then
ColourNote ("yellow", "black", "-"..revcount.."- Rev")
end

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "lizardman") do
lizcount = lizcount +1
end

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "two .* .* .* lizardmans") do
lizcount = lizcount +1
end 

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "three .* .* .* lizardmans") do
lizcount = lizcount +2
end

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "four .* .* .* lizardmans") do
lizcount = lizcount +3
end

if lizcount > 1 then
ColourNote ("yellow", "black", "-"..lizcount.."- Lizards")
elseif lizcount == 1 then
ColourNote ("yellow", "black", "-"..lizcount.."- Lizard")
end

There's probably a more elegant and concise way to do this?
Just curious how would I gmatch for "revenant" without also capturing "revenants" like it's currently doing. I'm compensating for that by reducing the count by 1 for the multiple two/three mobs as shown.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Mon 03 Mar 2025 11:31 PM #3

You can make a table of words (eg. one, two, three) and use that for matching each one, like this:


numbers = {
  "one",
  "two",
  "three",
  "four",
  "five",    -- etc.
  }

for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, "revenant%f[%A]") do
  revcount = revcount + 1
end

for num, word in ipairs (numbers) do
  for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, word .. " .* revenants") do
    revcount = revcount + num
  end 
end -- for

Note (count .. " revenants")

The use of "revenant%f[%A]" is a "frontier pattern" that matches the end of a word, so it matches revenant and not revenants.

Then if you are matching on other things (eg. lizardman) then the whole thing could go in a function and you pass in the word you are looking for (eg. revanant, lizardman). Or, have a table of them, and make an outer loop that gives you each word to look for, and the inner one would be the code above.

Solara USA Tue 04 Mar 2025 06:29 AM #4

Wow thanks Nick. So elegant

Solara USA Tue 04 Mar 2025 05:06 PM #5

Nick,

Using your more concise code with the table of number words, it didn't seem to work for this text from the game:

"A room with a dried-out revenant facing backwards, two fragile-looking revenants facing backwards, two menacing revenants facing backwards and a red-eyed revenant facing backwards."

It only returned 4 revenants. From what I can tell, the coding should work.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Tue 04 Mar 2025 08:53 PM #6

Yes, there should be 6, not 4.

You need to amend the pattern and change .* to .- which makes the capture not greedy:


for num, word in ipairs (numbers) do
  for word in string.gmatch (RoomLook, word .. " .- revenants") do
    revcount = revcount + num
    print (word)
  end 
end -- for

Also, in my code I didn't zero out revcount, nor did I print revcount. This works and returns 6:


function countMobs (name, look)

  local count = 0

  local numbers = {
    "one",
    "two",
    "three",
    "four",
    "five",
    "six",
    "seven",
    "eight",
    "nine",
    -- etc.
    }

  for word in string.gmatch (look, name .. "%f[%A]") do
    count = count + 1
  end

  for num, word in ipairs (numbers) do
    for word in string.gmatch (look, word .. " .- " .. name .. "s") do
      count = count + num
    end 
  end -- for

  Note (count, " ", name, "(s)") 
end -- countMobs

RoomLook = "A room with a dried-out revenant facing backwards, two fragile-looking revenants facing backwards, two menacing revenants facing backwards and a red-eyed revenant facing backwards."

countMobs ("revenant", RoomLook)

This version moves the calculation into a function, then you pass it the thing you are looking for (revenant) and the room look.