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How to find the max number of times a sequence of characters repeats consecutively in a string? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to count consecutive repetitions of a substring in a string?
(4 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I'm working on a cs50/pset6/dna project. I'm struggling with finding a way to analyze a sequence of strings, and gather the maximum number of times a certain sequence of characters repeats consecutively. Here is an example:
String: JOKHCNHBVDBVDBVDJHGSBVDBVD
Sequence of characters I should look for: BVD
Result: My function should be able to return 3, because in one point the characters BVD repeat three times consecutively, and even though it repeats again two times, I should look for the time that it repeats the most number of times.

It's a bit lame, but one "brute-force"ish way would be to just check for the presence of the longest substring possible. As soon as a substring is found, break out of the loop:
EDIT - Using a function might be more straight forward:
def get_longest_repeating_pattern(string, pattern):
if not pattern:
return ""
for i in range(len(string)//len(pattern), 0, -1):
current_pattern = pattern * i
if current_pattern in string:
return current_pattern
return ""
string = "JOKHCNHBVDBVDBVDJHGSBVDBVD"
pattern = "BVD"
longest_repeating_pattern = get_longest_repeating_pattern(string, pattern)
print(len(longest_repeating_pattern))
EDIT - explanation:
First, just a simple for-loop that starts at a larger number and goes down to a smaller number. For example, we start at 5 and go down to 0 (but not including 0), with a step size of -1:
>>> for i in range(5, 0, -1):
print(i)
5
4
3
2
1
>>>
if string = "JOKHCNHBVDBVDBVDJHGSBVDBVD", then len(string) would be 26, if pattern = "BVD", then len(pattern) is 3.
Back to my original code:
for i in range(len(string)//len(pattern), 0, -1):
Plugging in the numbers:
for i in range(26//3, 0, -1):
26//3 is an integer division which yields 8, so this becomes:
for i in range(8, 0, -1):
So, it's a for-loop that goes from 8 to 1 (remember, it doesn't go down to 0). i takes on the new value for each iteration, first 8 , then 7, etc.
In Python, you can "multiply" strings, like so:
>>> pattern = "BVD"
>>> pattern * 1
'BVD'
>>> pattern * 2
'BVDBVD'
>>> pattern * 3
'BVDBVDBVD'
>>>

A slightly less bruteforcey solution:
string = 'JOKHCNHBVDBVDBVDJHGSBVDBVD'
key = 'BVD'
len_k = len(key)
max_l = 0
passes = 0
curr_len=0
for i in range(len(string) - len_k + 1): # split the string into substrings of same len as key
if passes > 0: # If key was found in previous sequences, pass ()this way, if key is 'BVD', we will ignore 'VD.' and 'D..'
passes-=1
continue
s = string[i:i+len_k]
if s == key:
curr_len+=1
if curr_len > max_l:
max_l=curr_len
passes = len(key)-1
if prev_s == key:
if curr_len > max_l:
max_l=curr_len
else:
curr_len=0
prev_s = s
print(max_l)

You can do that very easily, elegantly and efficiently using a regex.
We look for all sequences of at least one repetition of your search string. Then, we just need to take the maximum length of these sequences, and divide by the length of the search string.
The regex we use is '(:?<your_sequence>)+': at least one repetition (the +) of the group (<your_sequence>). The :? is just here to make the group non capturing, so that findall returns the whole match, and not just the group.
In case there is no match, we use the default parameter of the max function to return 0.
The code is very short, then:
import re
def max_consecutive_repetitions(search, data):
search_re = re.compile('(?:' + search + ')+')
return max((len(seq) for seq in search_re.findall(data)), default=0) // len(search)
Sample run:
print(max_consecutive_repetitions("BVD", "JOKHCNHBVDBVDBVDJHGSBVDBVD"))
# 3

This is my contribution, I'm not a professional but it worked for me (sorry for bad English)
results = {}
# Loops through all the STRs
for i in range(1, len(reader.fieldnames)):
STR = reader.fieldnames[i]
j = 0
s=0
pre_s = 0
# Loops through all the characters in sequence.txt
while j < (len(sequence) - len(STR)):
# checks if the character we are currently looping is the same than the first STR character
if STR[0] == sequence[j]:
# while the sub-string since j to j - STR lenght is the same than STR, I called this a streak
while sequence[j:(j + len(STR))] == STR:
# j skips to the end of sub-string
j += len(STR)
# streaks counter
s += 1
# if s > 0 means that that the whole STR and sequence coincided at least once
if s > 0:
# save the largest streak as pre_s
if s > pre_s:
pre_s = s
# restarts the streak counter to continue exploring the sequence
s=0
j += 1
# assigns pre_s value to a dictionary with the current STR as key
results[STR] = pre_s
print(results)

when a word in a sentence is input the program identifies all the positions where the word occurs [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to find all occurrences of a substring?
(32 answers)
Closed 12 months ago.
How do I find multiple occurrences of a string within a string in Python? Consider this:
>>> text = "Allowed Hello Hollow"
>>> text.find("ll")
1
>>>
So the first occurrence of ll is at 1 as expected. How do I find the next occurrence of it?
Same question is valid for a list. Consider:
>>> x = ['ll', 'ok', 'll']
How do I find all the ll with their indexes?

Using regular expressions, you can use re.finditer to find all (non-overlapping) occurences:
>>> import re
>>> text = 'Allowed Hello Hollow'
>>> for m in re.finditer('ll', text):
print('ll found', m.start(), m.end())
ll found 1 3
ll found 10 12
ll found 16 18
Alternatively, if you don't want the overhead of regular expressions, you can also repeatedly use str.find to get the next index:
>>> text = 'Allowed Hello Hollow'
>>> index = 0
>>> while index < len(text):
index = text.find('ll', index)
if index == -1:
break
print('ll found at', index)
index += 2 # +2 because len('ll') == 2
ll found at 1
ll found at 10
ll found at 16
This also works for lists and other sequences.

I think what you are looking for is string.count
"Allowed Hello Hollow".count('ll')
>>> 3
Hope this helps
NOTE: this only captures non-overlapping occurences

For the list example, use a comprehension:
>>> l = ['ll', 'xx', 'll']
>>> print [n for (n, e) in enumerate(l) if e == 'll']
[0, 2]
Similarly for strings:
>>> text = "Allowed Hello Hollow"
>>> print [n for n in xrange(len(text)) if text.find('ll', n) == n]
[1, 10, 16]
this will list adjacent runs of "ll', which may or may not be what you want:
>>> text = 'Alllowed Hello Holllow'
>>> print [n for n in xrange(len(text)) if text.find('ll', n) == n]
[1, 2, 11, 17, 18]

FWIW, here are a couple of non-RE alternatives that I think are neater than poke's solution.
The first uses str.index and checks for ValueError:
def findall(sub, string):
"""
>>> text = "Allowed Hello Hollow"
>>> tuple(findall('ll', text))
(1, 10, 16)
"""
index = 0 - len(sub)
try:
while True:
index = string.index(sub, index + len(sub))
yield index
except ValueError:
pass
The second tests uses str.find and checks for the sentinel of -1 by using iter:
def findall_iter(sub, string):
"""
>>> text = "Allowed Hello Hollow"
>>> tuple(findall_iter('ll', text))
(1, 10, 16)
"""
def next_index(length):
index = 0 - length
while True:
index = string.find(sub, index + length)
yield index
return iter(next_index(len(sub)).next, -1)
To apply any of these functions to a list, tuple or other iterable of strings, you can use a higher-level function —one that takes a function as one of its arguments— like this one:
def findall_each(findall, sub, strings):
"""
>>> texts = ("fail", "dolly the llama", "Hello", "Hollow", "not ok")
>>> list(findall_each(findall, 'll', texts))
[(), (2, 10), (2,), (2,), ()]
>>> texts = ("parallellized", "illegally", "dillydallying", "hillbillies")
>>> list(findall_each(findall_iter, 'll', texts))
[(4, 7), (1, 6), (2, 7), (2, 6)]
"""
return (tuple(findall(sub, string)) for string in strings)

For your list example:
In [1]: x = ['ll','ok','ll']
In [2]: for idx, value in enumerate(x):
...: if value == 'll':
...: print idx, value
0 ll
2 ll
If you wanted all the items in a list that contained 'll', you could also do that.
In [3]: x = ['Allowed','Hello','World','Hollow']
In [4]: for idx, value in enumerate(x):
...: if 'll' in value:
...: print idx, value
...:
...:
0 Allowed
1 Hello
3 Hollow

This code might not be the shortest/most efficient but it is simple and understandable
def findall(f, s):
l = []
i = -1
while True:
i = s.find(f, i+1)
if i == -1:
return l
l.append(s.find(f, i))
findall('test', 'test test test test')
# [0, 5, 10, 15]

For the first version, checking a string:
def findall(text, sub):
"""Return all indices at which substring occurs in text"""
return [
index
for index in range(len(text) - len(sub) + 1)
if text[index:].startswith(sub)
]
print(findall('Allowed Hello Hollow', 'll'))
# [1, 10, 16]
No need to import re. This should run in linear time, as it only loops through the string once (and stops before the end, once there aren't enough characters left to fit the substring). I also find it quite readable, personally.
Note that this will find overlapping occurrences:
print(findall('aaa', 'aa'))
# [0, 1]

>>> for n,c in enumerate(text):
... try:
... if c+text[n+1] == "ll": print n
... except: pass
...
1
10
16

This version should be linear in length of the string, and should be fine as long as the sequences aren't too repetitive (in which case you can replace the recursion with a while loop).
def find_all(st, substr, start_pos=0, accum=[]):
ix = st.find(substr, start_pos)
if ix == -1:
return accum
return find_all(st, substr, start_pos=ix + 1, accum=accum + [ix])
bstpierre's list comprehension is a good solution for short sequences, but looks to have quadratic complexity and never finished on a long text I was using.
findall_lc = lambda txt, substr: [n for n in xrange(len(txt))
if txt.find(substr, n) == n]
For a random string of non-trivial length, the two functions give the same result:
import random, string; random.seed(0)
s = ''.join([random.choice(string.ascii_lowercase) for _ in range(100000)])
>>> find_all(s, 'th') == findall_lc(s, 'th')
True
>>> findall_lc(s, 'th')[:4]
[564, 818, 1872, 2470]
But the quadratic version is about 300 times slower
%timeit find_all(s, 'th')
1000 loops, best of 3: 282 µs per loop
%timeit findall_lc(s, 'th')
10 loops, best of 3: 92.3 ms per loop

Brand new to programming in general and working through an online tutorial. I was asked to do this as well, but only using the methods I had learned so far (basically strings and loops). Not sure if this adds any value here, and I know this isn't how you would do it, but I got it to work with this:
needle = input()
haystack = input()
counter = 0
n=-1
for i in range (n+1,len(haystack)+1):
for j in range(n+1,len(haystack)+1):
n=-1
if needle != haystack[i:j]:
n = n+1
continue
if needle == haystack[i:j]:
counter = counter + 1
print (counter)

The following function finds all the occurrences of a string inside another while informing the position where each occurrence is found.
You can call the function using the test cases in the table below. You can try with words, spaces and numbers all mixed up.
The function works well with overlapping characters.
theString
aString
"661444444423666455678966"
"55"
"661444444423666455678966"
"44"
"6123666455678966"
"666"
"66123666455678966"
"66"
Calling examples:
1. print("Number of occurrences: ", find_all("123666455556785555966", "5555"))
output:
Found in position: 7
Found in position: 14
Number of occurrences: 2
2. print("Number of occurrences: ", find_all("Allowed Hello Hollow", "ll "))
output:
Found in position: 1
Found in position: 10
Found in position: 16
Number of occurrences: 3
3. print("Number of occurrences: ", find_all("Aaa bbbcd$###abWebbrbbbbrr 123", "bbb"))
output:
Found in position: 4
Found in position: 21
Number of occurrences: 2
def find_all(theString, aString):
count = 0
i = len(aString)
x = 0
while x < len(theString) - (i-1):
if theString[x:x+i] == aString:
print("Found in position: ", x)
x=x+i
count=count+1
else:
x=x+1
return count

#!/usr/local/bin python3
#-*- coding: utf-8 -*-
main_string = input()
sub_string = input()
count = counter = 0
for i in range(len(main_string)):
if main_string[i] == sub_string[0]:
k = i + 1
for j in range(1, len(sub_string)):
if k != len(main_string) and main_string[k] == sub_string[j]:
count += 1
k += 1
if count == (len(sub_string) - 1):
counter += 1
count = 0
print(counter)
This program counts the number of all substrings even if they are overlapped without the use of regex. But this is a naive implementation and for better results in worst case it is advised to go through either Suffix Tree, KMP and other string matching data structures and algorithms.

Here is my function for finding multiple occurrences. Unlike the other solutions here, it supports the optional start and end parameters for slicing, just like str.index:
def all_substring_indexes(string, substring, start=0, end=None):
result = []
new_start = start
while True:
try:
index = string.index(substring, new_start, end)
except ValueError:
return result
else:
result.append(index)
new_start = index + len(substring)

A simple iterative code which returns a list of indices where the substring occurs.
def allindices(string, sub):
l=[]
i = string.find(sub)
while i >= 0:
l.append(i)
i = string.find(sub, i + 1)
return l

You can split to get relative positions then sum consecutive numbers in a list and add (string length * occurence order) at the same time to get the wanted string indexes.
>>> key = 'll'
>>> text = "Allowed Hello Hollow"
>>> x = [len(i) for i in text.split(key)[:-1]]
>>> [sum(x[:i+1]) + i*len(key) for i in range(len(x))]
[1, 10, 16]
>>>

Maybe not so Pythonic, but somewhat more self-explanatory. It returns the position of the word looked in the original string.
def retrieve_occurences(sequence, word, result, base_counter):
indx = sequence.find(word)
if indx == -1:
return result
result.append(indx + base_counter)
base_counter += indx + len(word)
return retrieve_occurences(sequence[indx + len(word):], word, result, base_counter)

I think there's no need to test for length of text; just keep finding until there's nothing left to find. Like this:
>>> text = 'Allowed Hello Hollow'
>>> place = 0
>>> while text.find('ll', place) != -1:
print('ll found at', text.find('ll', place))
place = text.find('ll', place) + 2
ll found at 1
ll found at 10
ll found at 16

You can also do it with conditional list comprehension like this:
string1= "Allowed Hello Hollow"
string2= "ll"
print [num for num in xrange(len(string1)-len(string2)+1) if string1[num:num+len(string2)]==string2]
# [1, 10, 16]

I had randomly gotten this idea just a while ago. Using a While loop with string splicing and string search can work, even for overlapping strings.
findin = "algorithm alma mater alison alternation alpines"
search = "al"
inx = 0
num_str = 0
while True:
inx = findin.find(search)
if inx == -1: #breaks before adding 1 to number of string
break
inx = inx + 1
findin = findin[inx:] #to splice the 'unsearched' part of the string
num_str = num_str + 1 #counts no. of string
if num_str != 0:
print("There are ",num_str," ",search," in your string.")
else:
print("There are no ",search," in your string.")
I'm an amateur in Python Programming (Programming of any language, actually), and am not sure what other issues it could have, but I guess it's working fine?
I guess lower() could be used somewhere in it too if needed.

Finding the length of longest repeating?

I have tried plenty of different methods to achieve this, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
reps=[]
len_charac=0
def longest_charac(strng)
for i in range(len(strng)):
if strng[i] == strng[i+1]:
if strng[i] in reps:
reps.append(strng[i])
len_charac=len(reps)
return len_charac

Remember in Python counting loops and indexing strings aren't usually needed. There is also a builtin max function:
def longest(s):
maximum = count = 0
current = ''
for c in s:
if c == current:
count += 1
else:
count = 1
current = c
maximum = max(count,maximum)
return maximum
Output:
>>> longest('')
0
>>> longest('aab')
2
>>> longest('a')
1
>>> longest('abb')
2
>>> longest('aabccdddeffh')
3
>>> longest('aaabcaaddddefgh')
4

Simple solution:
def longest_substring(strng):
len_substring=0
longest=0
for i in range(len(strng)):
if i > 0:
if strng[i] != strng[i-1]:
len_substring = 0
len_substring += 1
if len_substring > longest:
longest = len_substring
return longest
Iterates through the characters in the string and checks against the previous one. If they are different then the count of repeating characters is reset to zero, then the count is incremented. If the current count beats the current record (stored in longest) then it becomes the new longest.

Compare two things and there is one relation between them:
'a' == 'a'
True
Compare three things, and there are two relations:
'a' == 'a' == 'b'
True False
Combine these ideas - repeatedly compare things with the things next to them, and the chain gets shorter each time:
'a' == 'a' == 'b'
True == False
False
It takes one reduction for the 'b' comparison to be False, because there was one 'b'; two reductions for the 'a' comparison to be False because there were two 'a'. Keep repeating until the relations are all all False, and that is how many consecutive equal characters there were.
def f(s):
repetitions = 0
while any(s):
repetitions += 1
s = [ s[i] and s[i] == s[i+1] for i in range(len(s)-1) ]
return repetitions
>>> f('aaabcaaddddefgh')
4
NB. matching characters at the start become True, only care about comparing the Trues with anything, and stop when all the Trues are gone and the list is all Falses.
It can also be squished into a recursive version, passing the depth in as an optional parameter:
def f(s, depth=1):
s = [ s[i] and s[i]==s[i+1] for i in range(len(s)-1) ]
return f(s, depth+1) if any(s) else depth
>>> f('aaabcaaddddefgh')
4
I stumbled on this while trying for something else, but it's quite pleasing.

You can use itertools.groupby to solve this pretty quickly, it will group characters together, and then you can sort the resulting list by length and get the last entry in the list as follows:
from itertools import groupby
print(sorted([list(g) for k, g in groupby('aaabcaaddddefgh')],key=len)[-1])
This should give you:
['d', 'd', 'd', 'd']

This works:
def longestRun(s):
if len(s) == 0: return 0
runs = ''.join('*' if x == y else ' ' for x,y in zip(s,s[1:]))
starStrings = runs.split()
if len(starStrings) == 0: return 1
return 1 + max(len(stars) for stars in starStrings)
Output:
>>> longestRun("aaabcaaddddefgh")
4

First off, Python is not my primary language, but I can still try to help.
1) you look like you are exceeding the bounds of the array. On the last iteration, you check the last character against the character beyond the last character. This normally leads to undefined behavior.
2) you start off with an empty reps[] array and compare every character to see if it's in it. Clearly, that check will fail every time and your append is within that if statement.

def longest_charac(string):
longest = 0
if string:
flag = string[0]
tmp_len = 0
for item in string:
if item == flag:
tmp_len += 1
else:
flag = item
tmp_len = 1
if tmp_len > longest:
longest = tmp_len
return longest
This is my solution. Maybe it will help you.

Just for context, here is a recursive approach that avoids dealing with loops:
def max_rep(prev, text, reps, rep=1):
"""Recursively consume all characters in text and find longest repetition.
Args
prev: string of previous character
text: string of remaining text
reps: list of ints of all reptitions observed
rep: int of current repetition observed
"""
if text == '': return max(reps)
if prev == text[0]:
rep += 1
else:
rep = 1
return max_rep(text[0], text[1:], reps + [rep], rep)
Tests:
>>> max_rep('', 'aaabcaaddddefgh', [])
4
>>> max_rep('', 'aaaaaabcaadddddefggghhhhhhh', [])
7

Count overlapping substring in a string [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
String count with overlapping occurrences [closed]
(25 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
Say I have string = 'hannahannahskdjhannahannah' and I want to count the number of times the string hannah occurs, I can't simply use count, because that only counts the substring once in each case. That is, I am expecting to return 4 but only returns 2 when I run this with string.count('hannah').

You could use a running index to fetch the next occurance:
bla = 'hannahannahskdjhannahannah'
cnt = 0
idx = 0
while True:
idx = bla.find('hannah', idx)
if idx >= 0:
cnt += 1
idx += 1
else:
break
print(cnt)
Gives:
>> 4

How about something like this?
>>> d = {}
>>> string = 'hannahannahskdjhannahannah'
>>> for i in xrange(0,len(string)-len('hannah')+1):
... if string[i:i+len('hannah')] == 'hannah':
... d['hannah'] = d.get('hannah',0)+1
...
>>> d
{'hannah': 4}
>>>
This searches the string for hannah by splicing the string iteratively from index 0 all the way up to the length of the string minus the length of hannah

'''
s: main string
sub: sub-string
count: number of sub-strings found
p: use the found sub-string's index in p for finding the next occurrence of next sub-string
'''
count=0
p=0
for letter in s:
p=s.find(sub,p)
if(p!=-1):
count+=1
p+=1
print count

If you want to count also nonconsecutive substrings, this is the way to do it
def subword(lookup,whole):
if len(whole)<len(lookup):
return 0
if lookup==whole:
return 1
if lookup=='':
return 1
if lookup[0]==whole[0]:
return subword(lookup[1:],whole[1:])+subword(lookup,whole[1:])
return subword(lookup,whole[1:])

def Count_overlap(string, substring):
count = 0
start = 0
while start < len(string):
pos = string.find(substring, start)
if pos != -1:
start = pos + 1
count += 1
else:
break
return count
string = "hannahannahskdjhannahannah"
print(Count_overlap(string, "hannah"))

Don't want to answer this for you as it's simple enough to work out yourself.
But if I were you I'd use the string.find() method which takes the string you're looking for and the position to start looking from, combined with a while loop which uses the result of the find method as it's condition in some way.
That should in theory give you the answer.

Counting longest occurrence of repeated sequence in Python

What's the easiest way to count the longest consecutive repeat of a certain character in a string? For example, the longest consecutive repeat of "b" in the following string:
my_str = "abcdefgfaabbbffbbbbbbfgbb"
would be 6, since other consecutive repeats are shorter (3 and 2, respectively.) How can I do this in Python?

How about a regex example:
import re
my_str = "abcdefgfaabbbffbbbbbbfgbb"
len(max(re.compile("(b+b)*").findall(my_str))) #changed the regex from (b+b) to (b+b)*
# max([len(i) for i in re.compile("(b+b)").findall(my_str)]) also works
Edit, Mine vs. interjays
x=timeit.Timer(stmt='import itertools;my_str = "abcdefgfaabbbffbbbbbbfgbb";max(len(list(y)) for (c,y) in itertools.groupby(my_str) if c=="b")')
x.timeit()
22.759046077728271
x=timeit.Timer(stmt='import re;my_str = "abcdefgfaabbbffbbbbbbfgbb";len(max(re.compile("(b+b)").findall(my_str)))')
x.timeit()
8.4770550727844238

Here is a one-liner:
max(len(list(y)) for (c,y) in itertools.groupby(my_str) if c=='b')
Explanation:
itertools.groupby will return groups of consecutive identical characters, along with an iterator for all items in that group. For each such iterator, len(list(y)) will give the number of items in the group. Taking the maximum of that (for the given character) will give the required result.

Here's my really boring, inefficient, straightforward counting method (interjay's is much better). Note, I wrote this in this little text field, which doesn't have an interpreter, so I haven't tested it, and I may have made a really dumb mistake that a proof-read didn't catch.
my_str = "abcdefgfaabbbffbbbbbbfgbb"
last_char = ""
current_seq_len = 0
max_seq_len = 0
for c in mystr:
if c == last_char:
current_seq_len += 1
if current_seq_len > max_seq_len:
max_seq_len = current_seq_len
else:
current_seq_len = 1
last_char = c
print(max_seq_len)

Using run-length encoding:
import numpy as NP
signal = NP.array([4,5,6,7,3,4,3,5,5,5,5,3,4,2,8,9,0,1,2,8,8,8,0,9,1,3])
px, = NP.where(NP.ediff1d(signal) != 0)
px = NP.r_[(0, px+1, [len(signal)])]
# collect the run-lengths for each unique item in the signal
rx = [ (m, n, signal[m]) for (m, n) in zip(px[:-1], px[1:]) if (n - m) > 1 ]
# get longest:
rx2 = [ (b-a, c) for (a, b, c) in rx ]
rx2.sort(reverse=True)
# returns: [(4, 5), (3, 8)], ie, '5' occurs 4 times consecutively, '8' occurs 3 times consecutively

Here is my code, Not that efficient but seems to work:
def LongCons(mystring):
dictionary = {}
CurrentCount = 0
latestchar = ''
for i in mystring:
if i == latestchar:
CurrentCount += 1
if dictionary.has_key(i):
if CurrentCount > dictionary[i]:
dictionary[i]=CurrentCount
else:
CurrentCount = 1
dictionary.update({i: CurrentCount})
latestchar = i
k = max(dictionary, key=dictionary.get)
print(k, dictionary[k])
return