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JavaScript Practice Object Basics in JavaScript Practicing Object Basics Adding a Property Solution

Posted by mersadajan
mersadajan
21,306 Points

Number of characters excluding spaces

I thought we had to count all characters in the string excluding all spaces and wrote this code: 

const myString = {
    string: "Programming with Treehouse is fun!",
    countWords: function () {
    const words = this.string.split(" ");
    return words.length;
  }
}
myString.countWords();

var numWords = myString.countWords();
myString.characters = function() {
  const character = this.string.replace(/\s+/g,"");
  return character.length;
}
console.log(myString.characters());

I was stuck on this challenge for a long time :( The task was too confusing as it was too simple and unnecessary. Why would I save the length of a string in a property if that string has it*s own length property? And are spaces considered characters?

Rich Donnellan
Rich Donnellan
Treehouse Moderator 27,671 Points
Rich Donnellan
Rich Donnellan
Treehouse Moderator 27,671 Points

Question updated with code formatting. Check out the Markdown Cheatsheet below the Add an Answer submission for syntax examples.

mersadajan
mersadajan
21,306 Points

Thank you Rich Donnellan! I was wondering what happened haha

Michael Macdonald
Michael Macdonald
34,265 Points
Michael Macdonald
Michael Macdonald
34,265 Points

Yeah, I agree with mersadajan. The explanation for the task was kinda confusing.. I must have chewed up half an hour looking for at regex for JavaScript. Which, I haven't covered yet in JavaScipt, but luckily I learnt it from Craig through Java. Then only to find, that they wanted the length...lol Gotta remember some of us ain't that smart... I failed highschool english 2x, then dropped out, lucky I have google, lol

Samuel Kleos
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Samuel Kleos
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 12,719 Points

https://charactercounter.com/count-characters-in-javascript

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,644 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,644 Points

You were getting way too fancy there! The challenge doesn't ask for a method, just a property containing a value.

And yes, spaces are included in the characters. And you're also right that this would not be terribly useful since you can always get the length of the string property directly. But since the point of the challenge was just to practice creating new properties, it served that purpose.

Paul May
Paul May
3,432 Points
Paul May
Paul May
3,432 Points

I agree the challenge was a little ambiguous. I think an easier way to accomplish the same result without having to manipulate the string with regex would be something like 

const numCharacters = myString.string.length - myString.numWords;

Since we defined the numWords variable in the last challenge which holds the number of spaces, we can simply take this from that value from the length of the string and be left with the number of characters.