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

Abrar Fahim
Abrar Fahim
1,071 Points
Posted by Abrar Fahim
Abrar Fahim
1,071 Points

I have no idea what to do please help

I don't get the question and don't know what to do. I checked some of the solutions and they kept on putting this:

 if word in dict:
            dict[word] += 1
        else:
            dict[word] = 1

what does that even mean? can somebody explain and help me and also why do I need a for loop?

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(word):
    word
Ted Runyon
Ted Runyon
1,773 Points
Ted Runyon
Ted Runyon
1,773 Points

First you will want to make your string argument lowercase:

def word_count(s):
    list_of_lowercase_words = s.lower()

Then you can split the string and store that in the same variable:

def word_count(s):
    list_of_lowercase_words = s.lower().split()

Then create an empty dictionary:

dictionary_of_words = {}

Then you want to create a for loop because you need to iterate through the string(which was turned into a list during, the split() method). Basically your string is now a list of words and you need a for loop to go through each word. Here we can iterate through each word in our list and count them. 

for word in list_of_lowercase_words:
    try:
        dictionary_of_words[word] += 1
    except KeyError:
        dictionary_of_words[word] = 1

Finally returning the dictionary:

return dictionary_of_words

code put together looks like this. 

def word_count(s):
    list_of_lowercase_words = s.lower().split()
    dictionary_of_words = {}

    for word in list_of_lowercase_words:
        try:
            dictionary_of_words[word] += 1
        except KeyError:
            dictionary_of_words[word] = 1

    return dictionary_of_words

This is my first time posting on here and I was stuck on this for a little while. I know how it feels. Hope this helps!

1 Answer