Problem 242. Make a function that returns its own character count

Created by Ned Gulley
Appears in Tough Stuff

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Write a function that returns a 128 element vector with an accurate inventory of the ASCII characters in its own function file. The test suite uses textscan to verify that your function returns the exact same census.
 file = textscan(fid,'%c','CommentStyle','%','Whitespace','')
 filetext = file{1};
 texthist = histc(filetext,1:128);
Newlines are suppressed by this approach, so you may assume the counts for ASCII 10 and 13 are zero.
Special Note: The characters associated with ASCII values 33-41 are not allowed in your function. For clarity, these are
 33 !
 34 "
 35 #
 36 $
 37 %
 38 &
 39 '
 40 (
 41 )

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Last Solution submitted on Jul 26, 2025

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minnolina on 16 Jun 2024

I'm not sure if I've understood the test correctly.

ha = histc(file{1},1:128);
hp = omphaloskeptic;
assert(~any(ismember(33:41,find(ha))),'Used an illegal character');

This assertion checks if forbidden characters are used in ha, which is the histogram of the file content. However, our output is hp, which is the histogram produced by the function omphaloskeptic. Shouldn't the assertion check for forbidden characters in hp, not ha, or am I missing something?

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Problem 242. Make a function that returns its own character count

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Problem 242. Make a function that returns its own character count

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