A good time to use regular expressions. I first stuffed the strings into an array that I could import.

The answer is 366 .

Iterate through the file and find the score of each word. Use a variable ( totalscore in the below example) to keep a running count of the score as you examine each word. Once all words have been processed, return the total score.

Finding the score of a word : To find the score of the word, iterate through its letters while keeping track of 2 variables, score and currscore . score holds the current maximum substring length that holds only 'a's, 'b's, and 'c's. currscore holds the length of current stretch of 'a's, 'b's, and 'c's. Every time (currscore > score) , set (score = currscore) . When you reach the end of the letters in the word, score holds the word's score.

# Python example
def patterns():
    # open file in read-only
    with open('cs_patterns.txt', 'r') as f:
        totalscore = 0 # holds the current total score

        for word in f:
            # iterate through the letters of the word
            # use currscore to keep track of the length of the 
            # current stretch of a's, b's, and c's.

            # score holds the max score for the word.
            score = 0
            currscore = 0
            for i in range(len(word)):
                if (word[i] == 'a' or word[i] == 'b' or word[i] == 'c'):
                    currscore += 1
                    if (currscore > score):
                        score = currscore
                else:
                    # if the current letter isn't an 'a', 'b', or 'c'
                    # then the length of the current run is 0.
                    currscore = 0
            totalscore += score

        print totalscore

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

#include<iostream>
#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
using namespace std;

int num[100],conta;
char c[5000];

int main()
{   
    FILE *pf;
    pf=fopen("input.txt","r");
    for(int i=0;i<1000;i++)
    {fscanf(pf,"%s",c); 
       if(c[0]=='a' || c[0]=='b' || c[0]=='c') num[0]=1;
            for(int j=1;j<10;j++){ 
               if(c[j]=='a' || c[j]=='b' || c[j]=='c'){
                   if(num[j-1]!=0) num[j]=num[j-1]+1; else num[j]=1;
               } 
               else num[j]=0; 
            } 
            sort(num,num+10); conta+=num[9];                    
    }
  fclose(pf);
  pf=fopen("output.txt","w"); fprintf(pf,"%d\n",conta); 
  fclose(pf);
  return 0;
}

conta=2366

C++

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42

#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <algorithm>
#include <math.h>
using namespace std;

int score(string str){
    str += '*';
    int largest = 0;
    int len = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < str.size(); i++){
        if (str[i] != 'a' && str[i] != 'b' && str[i] != 'c'){
            largest = max(len, largest);
            len = 0;
        }
        else
            len++;
    }
    return largest;
}

int main(){

    freopen("answer.in", "r", stdin);
    freopen("answer.out", "w", stdout);

    int n; cin >> n;

    int sum = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++){
        string str; cin >> str;
        sum += score(str);
    }

    cout << sum;

    return 0;
}