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Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Dictionaries Word Count

Gabri Chodosh
Gabri Chodosh
1,487 Points
Posted by Gabri Chodosh
Gabri Chodosh
1,487 Points

How do I create keys from all the words in a string? Do I combine a for loop and a packing/unpacking function?

I'm currently working on the Word Count challenge and I just don't know how to start -- I don't completely understand how these packing/unpacking functions work and I assume I'll need to use them to finish this challenge. I'm also not sure how to combine a for loop with a dict.keys() function.

wordcount.py 
# E.g. word_count("I do not like it Sam I Am") gets back a dictionary like:
# {'i': 2, 'do': 1, 'it': 1, 'sam': 1, 'like': 1, 'not': 1, 'am': 1}
# Lowercase the string to make it easier.
def word_count(string):

1 Answer

Bryan Reed
Bryan Reed
11,747 Points
Bryan Reed
Bryan Reed
11,747 Points

I started by creating a blank dict I would later use as my return. Then creating a list of all the words in the string by splitting it on whitespace (making sure to lowercase the word first.

Now you can iterate through the list of words and by using the count() method (https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/list_count.htm) you can .update() your blank dict with the proper keys and values you're iterating.

def word_count(string):
    count_dict = {}
    word_list = string.lower().split()
    for word in word_list:
        count_dict.update({word:word_list.count(word)})
    return count_dict