Bleep
tl;dr
Implement a program that censors messages that contain words that appear on a list of supplied "banned words."
$ python bleep.py banned.txt
What message would you like to censor?
What the heck
What the ****
$ python bleep.py banned.txt
What message would you like to censor?
gosh darn it
**** **** it
Getting Started
Here’s how to download this problem’s "distribution code" (i.e., starter code) into your own CS50 IDE. Log into CS50 IDE and then, in a terminal window, execute each of the below.
-
Execute
update50
to ensure your IDE is up-to-date. That command might take a few minutes to finish. -
Execute
cd ~/workspace/pset6
to ensure that you’re in~/workspace/pset6
(i.e., a directory calledworkspace
that’s in your home directory, aka~
). If you haven’t yet created that directory, create it now (remember how?). -
Execute
wget http://cdn.cs50.net/2018/fall/psets/6/bleep/bleep.zip
to download a (compressed) ZIP file with this problem’s distribution. -
Execute
unzip bleep.zip
to uncompress that file. -
Execute
rm bleep.zip
followed byyes
ory
to delete that ZIP file. -
Execute
ls
. You should see a directory calledbleep
, which was inside of that ZIP file. -
Execute
cd bleep
to change into that directory. -
Execute
ls
. You should see this problem’s distribution, includingbleep.py
andbanned.txt
.
Understanding
This program defines only one function, main
, which gets called per the file’s last line. Within main
… ugh, looks like that’s just a big TODO
!
Specification
Complete the implementation of bleep.py
in such a way that it:
-
Accepts as its sole command-line argument the name (or path) of a dictionary of banned words (i.e., text file).
-
Opens and reads from that file the list of words stored therein, one per line, and stores each in a Python data structure for later access. While a Python
list
will work well for this, you may also find aset
useful here. -
If no command line argument (e.g.,
banned.txt
) is provided, be sure to have your program exit with a status code of1
. -
You may assume that any text files the staff tests with will have one word per line (each line terminated with a
\n
), and any alphabetic characters in those words will be lowercase. -
Prompts the user to provide a message.
-
Tokenizes that message into its individual component words, using the
split
method on the provided string, and then iterates over thelist
of "tokens" (words) that is returned by callingsplit
, checking to see whether any of the tokens match, case-insensitively, any of the words in the banned words list. -
Prints back the message that the user provided, except if the message contained any banned words, each of its characters is replaced by a
*
. -
For example,
gosh
should be replaced with four*
characters, whilefudge
should be replaced with five. -
You should not censor words that merely contain a banned word as a substring. For example, if bar is a banned word in the provided list, then none of barns nor crowbar nor wheelbarrow should be censored.
-
You explicitly do not need to support input strings that contain punctuation marks. You may assume we will only test your input where each word is only separated by whitespace.
Usage
Your program should behave per the examples below. Assume that the underlined text is what some user has typed.
$ python bleep.py
Usage: python bleep.py dictionary
$ python bleep.py list1.txt list2.txt list3.txt
Usage: python bleep.py dictionary
$ python bleep.py banned.txt
What message would you like to censor?
hello world
hello world
$ python bleep.py banned.txt
What message would you like to censor?
what the heck
what the ****
$ python bleep.py banned.txt
What message would you like to censor?
gosh darn it
**** **** it
Testing
Correctness
check50 cs50/2018/fall/bleep
Style
style50 bleep.py
Staff’s Solution
~cs50/pset6/bleep
How to Submit
Execute the below from within your ~/workspace/pset6/bleep
directory, logging in with your GitHub username and password when prompted. For security, you’ll see asterisks (*
) instead of the actual characters in your password.
submit50 cs50/2018/fall/bleep
Hints
-
Be sure to test with different banned words lists than the one provided by default — we will!
-
When independently researching how to do things on this problem (which is indeed part of the expectation, as you grow in your comfort with programming overall!), be sure your Google searches and the like include "Python 3" in them, and not just "Python", lest you get code examples written in an earlier version of Python!
-
Odds are you’ll find
str.split
of interest. -
Odds are you’ll find
str.lower
of interest. -
Odds are you’ll find
str.strip
of interest, to chomp off any trailing newlines that may be attached to words on your "banned words" list.