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

Oscar Paytuvi
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Oscar Paytuvi
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 1,359 Points
Posted by Oscar Paytuvi
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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
Clayton Perszyk
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