Word Count counts characters instead of words

Question

I found that all I had to do for it to work was to use the split() and lower() method on the string in the for loop, but I'd just like to know why that fixes it.
```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(s):
    s.split()
    d = {}
    for item in s:
        if item in d:
            d.update({item: d.get(item)+1})
        else:
            d.update({item: 1})
    return d
```

Jennifer Nordell · Accepted Answer

Hi there, @Richárd Orbán (https://teamtreehouse.com/richrdorbn) !  My guess here is that you ended up with something that looked a bit like this in your for loop.
```
 for item in s.lower().split():
```
This makes the string in question lower case and split on every iteration. And it's working from that string lowercased and split.  
In your original code you had s.split(). And it does split the string, but the results of that aren't ever assigned anywhere. They are just sort of floating around out there in Python limbo and will go up for garbage collection. Your original code that you posted here would have worked if you had both turned it to lower case and split it and assigned the values back into s.
Instead of:
```py
s.split()
```
You could have done:
```py
s = s.lower().split()
```
Then when it evaluates s in the for loop it will be evaluating the correct thing. Again, when you do s.split() it isn't overwriting the original value of s so when it got down to the for loop it's still in its original unsplit condition.
Hope this helps! :sparkles:

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Richárd Orbán

Richárd Orbán

Word Count counts characters instead of words

1 Answer

Jennifer Nordell

Jennifer Nordell

Richárd Orbán

Richárd Orbán