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

Posted by Adi Strasser
Adi Strasser
3,846 Points

WORD COUNT

Why doesn't it work? Please help. I checked the code on a different editor and it worked just fine.

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 copy

def word_count(some_string):
    some_string = some_string.lower()
    some_string = some_string.split(" ")
    some_dictionary = {}
    broken = copy.copy(some_string)

    for word in some_string:
        if word in broken:
            some_dictionary[word] = 0

            while True:
                if word in broken:
                    some_dictionary[word] += 1
                    broken.remove(word)
                    continue

                else:
                    break

    return some_dictionary

1 Answer

Iain Simmons
MOD
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points
Iain Simmons
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points

I'm not sure what you're doing with the copy module and broken, but you should be able to just check if the word is already in the dictionary, increase the count of that word if it is, and otherwise set to 1 if not (which adds it to the dictionary)…

Also, you might get an error saying that you need to split the string on all kinds of whitespace, not just a single space character. This is the default for the split method, so you shouldn't need to pass in an argument to that function.

Good luck!