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Python Python Collections (Retired) Dictionaries Word Count

anhedonicblonde
anhedonicblonde
3,133 Points
Posted by anhedonicblonde
anhedonicblonde
3,133 Points

Question about word_count() function

For the word_count() challenge, I modified the solution and saved it as a script so I could run it in the Console and see how it worked. I used the code below but am getting a print of an empty dictionary. Can someone tell me why this is? If this was the solution, then why does it print an empty dictionary when explicitly given a string? (I ran the string as the argument for the word_count function first before naming a variable for it as you see here and had the same empty dictionary result)

def word_count(string):
    string_2 = string.lower()
    string_3 = string.split()
    dict = {}
    for word in dict:
        if word not in dict:
            dict[word] = 1
        else:
            dict[word] +=1

    print (dict)

string = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
word_count(string)

1 Answer

John Baulig
John Baulig
9,180 Points

Hi!

You lower() and split(), but don't call either in the function. Line 3 and the for loop should be adjusted as follows:

def word_count(string):
    string_2 = string.lower()
    string_3 = string_2.split()
    dict = {}
    for word in string_3:
        if word in dict:
            dict[word] += 1
        else:
            dict[word] = 1
    print(dict)

Hope that helps!

John Baulig
John Baulig
9,180 Points

Also- I try to avoid using dict as a variable

anhedonicblonde
anhedonicblonde
3,133 Points
anhedonicblonde
anhedonicblonde
3,133 Points

Awesome !! It works perfectly now, and I understand what I missed (yay!). And duly noted re: dict - good advice to follow :) Thanks so much!!