MIPS, Number of occurrences in a string located in the stack - string

Question

I have an exercise to solve in MIPS assembly (where I have some doubts but other things are clear) but I have some problem to write it's code. The exercise ask me:
Write a programm that, obtained a string from keyboard, count the occurrences of the character with the higher number of occurrences and show it.
How I can check all the 26 characters and find who has the higher occurences?
Example:
Give me a string: Hello world!
The character with the higher occurrences is: l
Thanks alot for the future answer.
P.s.
This is my first part of the programm:
#First message
li $v0, 4
la $a0, mess
syscall
#Stack space allocated
addi $sp, $sp, -257
#Read the string
move $a0, $sp
li $a1, 257
li $v0, 8
syscall

Answer 1

Since this is your assignment I'll leave the MIPS assembly implementation to you. I'll just show you the logic for the code in a higher-level language:
// You'd keep these variables in some MIPS registers of your choice
int c, i, count, max_count=0;
char max_char;
// Iterate over all ASCII character codes
for (c = 0; c < 128; c+=1) {
count = 0;
// Count the number of occurences of this character in the string
for (i = 0; string[i]!=0; i+=1) {
if (string[i] == c) count++;
}
// Was is greater than the current max?
if (count > max_count) {
max_count = count;
max_char = c;
}
}
// max_char now hold the ASCII code of the character with the highest number
// of occurences, and max_count hold the number of times that character was
// found in the string.

Answer 2

#Michael, I saw you answered before I posted, I just want to repeat that with a more detailed answer. If you edit your own to add some more explanations, then I will delete mine. I did not edit yours directly, because I was already half-way there when you posted. Anyway:
#Marco:
You can create a temporary array of 26 counters (initialized to 0).
Each counter corresponds to each letter (i.e. the number each letter occurs). For example counter[0] corresponds to the number of occurences of letter 'a', counter[1] for letter 'b', etc...
Then iterate over each character in the input character-sequence and for each character do:
a) Obtain the index of the character in the counter array.
b) Increase counter["obtained index"] by 1.
To obtain the index of the character you can do the following:
a) First make sure the character is not capital, i.e. only 'a' to 'z' allowed and not 'A' to 'Z'. If it is not, convert it.
b) Substract the letter 'a' from the character. This way 'a'-'a' gives 0, 'b'-'a' gives 1, 'c'-'a' gives 2, etc...
I will demonstrate in C language, because it's your exercise on MIPS (I mean the goal is to learn MIPS Assembly language):
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
//Maximum length of string:
int stringMaxLength = 100;
//Create string in stack. Size of string is length+1 to
//allow the '\0' character to mark the end of the string.
char str[stringMaxLength + 1];
//Read a string of maximum stringMaxLength characters:
puts("Enter string:");
scanf("%*s", stringMaxLength, str);
fflush(stdin);
//Create array of counters in stack:
int counter[26];
//Initialize the counters to 0:
int i;
for (i=0; i<26; ++i)
counter[i] = 0;
//Main counting loop:
for (i=0; str[i] != '\0'; ++i)
{
char tmp = str[i]; //Storing of str[i] in tmp, to write tmp if needed,
//instead of writing str[i] itself. Optional operation in this particular case.
if (tmp >= 'A' && tmp <= 'Z') //If the current character is upper:
tmp = tmp + 32; //Convert the character to lower.
if (tmp >= 'a' && tmp <='z') //If the character is a lower letter:
{
//Obtain the index of the letter in the array:
int index = tmp - 'a';
//Increment its counter by 1:
counter[index] = counter[index] + 1;
}
//Else if the chacacter is not a lower letter by now, we ignore it,
//or we could inform the user, for example, or we could ignore the
//whole string itself as invalid..
}
//Now find the maximum occurences of a letter:
int indexOfMaxCount = 0;
int maxCount = counter[0];
for (i=1; i<26; ++i)
if (counter[i] > maxCount)
{
maxCount = counter[i];
indexOfMaxCount = i;
}
//Convert the indexOfMaxCount back to the character it corresponds to:
char maxChar = 'a' + indexOfMaxCount;
//Inform the user of the letter with maximum occurences:
printf("Maximum %d occurences for letter '%c'.\n", maxCount, maxChar);
return 0;
}
If you don't understand why I convert the upper letter to lower by adding 32, then read on:
Each character corresponds to an integer value in memory, and when you make arithmetic operations on characters, it's like you are making them to their corresponding number in the encoding table.
An encoding is just a table which matches those letters with numbers.
For example 'a' corresponds to number 97 in ASCII encoding/decoding/table.
For example 'b' corresponds to number 98 in ASCII encoding/decoding/table.
So 'a'+1 gives 97+1=98 which is the character 'b'. They are all numbers in memory, and the difference is how you represent (decode) them. The same table of the encoding, is also used for decoding of course.
Examples:
printf("%c", 'a'); //Prints 'a'.
printf("%d", (int) 'a'); //Prints '97'.
printf("%c", (char) 97); //Prints 'a'.
printf("%d", 97); //Prints '97'.
printf("%d", (int) 'b'); //Prints '98'.
printf("%c", (char) (97 + 1)); //Prints 'b'.
printf("%c", (char) ( ((int) 'a') + 1 ) ); //Prints 'b'.
//Etc...
//All the casting in the above examples is just for demonstration,
//it would work without them also, in this case.