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Word Count on Large Files

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Your question is Word Count on Large Files. Start with the requirements on the right.

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Problem

Given 1TB of a file, how to check the word count using any language?

Implement count_words(chunks), where chunks is a list of string fragments read sequentially from the file. Return the number of whitespace-delimited words without loading the entire file into memory. A word may span multiple non-empty chunks, while whitespace and empty chunks end the current word.

Constraints

  • 0 <= len(chunks)
  • Each chunk is a string and chunks appear in file order.
  • The total number of characters can be approximately 1TB.
  • Words are separated by characters for which Python isspace() returns True.
  • The complete file must not be materialized as one in-memory string.

Function Signature

def count_words(chunks):
Your solutionPython 3
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