String score

You are given a string, $str. Write a script to return the score of the given string. The score of a string is defined as the sum of the absolute difference between the ASCII values of adjacent characters.

Examples

Example 1
Input: $str = 'hello'
Output: 13
ASCII values of characters:
h = 104
e = 101
l = 108
l = 108
o = 111
Score => |104 - 101| + |101 - 108| + |108 - 108| + |108 - 111|
      => 3 + 7 + 0 + 3
      => 13

Example 2
Input: 'perl'
Output: 30
ASCII values of characters:
p = 112
e = 101
r = 114
l = 108
Score => |112 - 101| + |101 - 114| + |114 - 108|
      => 11 + 13 + 6
      => 30

Example 3
Input: 'raku'
Output: 37
ASCII values of characters:
r = 114
a = 97
k = 107
u = 117
Score => |114 - 97| + |97 - 107| + |107 - 117|
      => 17 + 10 + 10
      => 37

Analysis

This is an easy one-liner:

($str =~ m|b(.*)| and $1 =~ m|^[^a]*$|) ? 
   'true' : 'false'

The first regular expression - $str =~ m|b(.*)| - looks for a 'b' and the second - $1 =~ m|^[^a]*$| - checks for no 'a' in the part of the string follwing the first 'b': note that the $1 refers to the matched substring from the first regular expression.

No gimmicks and just straight forward solutions in Perl with bonus DIY tool. Keep it up great work.

This review may cover either or both challenges for this week.

Try it 

Your input:

$string =

eg: marmalade

⤡

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Blog: http://ccgi.campbellsmiths.force9.co.uk/challenge

use v5.26;    # The Weekly Challenge - 2024-06-03
use utf8;     # Week 272 - task 2 - String score
use warnings; # Peter Campbell Smith
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';
use Encode;

string_score('hello');
string_score('supercalifragilisticexpialidocious');
string_score('The Weekly Challenge');
string_score('aĐbđcĒeēfĔgĕh🞱');

sub string_score {
    
    my ($score);
    
    $score += abs(ord(substr($_[0], $_, 1)) - 
        ord(substr($_[0], $_ - 1, 1))) 
        for 1 .. length($_[0]) - 1;
    say qq[\nInput:  $_[0]\nOutput: $score];    
}

6 lines of code

Output from script

Input:  hello
Output: 13

Input:  supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Output: 242

Input:  The Weekly Challenge
Output: 385

Input:  aĐbđcĒeēfĔgĕh🞱
Output: 130928