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

Oscar Paytuvi
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Oscar Paytuvi
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 1,359 Points

What characters should I split the string on?

I'm trying to solve the problem which fills a word dict with words and the number of occurrences of that word but I keep getting same error that I don't have to split only on spaces. Here is my code. What am I doing wrong?

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.
import re
def word_count(input_str):
    words = {}
    lower_str = input_str.lower()
    words_list = re.split("[, \-!?:;.]+",lower_str)
    for word in words_list:
        if word in words:
            words[word] += 1
        elif word:
            words[word] = 1
    return words

2 Answers

Clayton Perszyk
MOD
Clayton Perszyk
Treehouse Moderator 48,850 Points

Hey Oscar,

You don't need to import re. You can just use lower_str.split() - notice split is taking no arguments.

All you need to do to pass the challenge, is change this:

words_list = re.split("[, \-!?:;.]+",lower_str)

to this:

words_list = lower_str.split()

Best,

Clayton