- #1
duke_nemmerle
- 50
- 1
Homework Statement
Given that the ASCII character system has 128 possible characters how many 5 character strings are there with at least one occurence of the '@' symbol.Homework Equations
The Attempt at a Solution
So clearly which symbol we're using doesn't matter, and I see that the right answer comes from considering the total number of length 5 character strings minus the number of strings not containing the '@' character i.e. [tex]128^5-127^5[/tex].
My real question is what is wrong with the reasoning that we have 5 choices for where to put the '@' symbol multiplied by the [tex]128^4[/tex] possible strings from the other 4 characters. I can see that [tex]128^5-127^5 \not= 5(128^4)[/tex], but I'm wondering where the flaw in the reasoning is