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

John DiGiovanni
PLUS
John DiGiovanni
Courses Plus Student 902 Points
Posted by John DiGiovanni
John DiGiovanni
Courses Plus Student 902 Points

Word_count not working despite it working in my compiler

HI I created a function called ‘word_count’ as instructed and checked in pythonista to make sure it would return correctly and it does. I was wondering why I would get an error in treehouse.

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(thing):
    new_thing = (thing.lower()).split(" ")
    counter = {}

    for word in new_thing:
        number = new_thing.count(word)
        counter.update({word: number})
    return counter

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,007 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,007 Points

You're probably not testing with the same input the challenge uses (it does not only use the sample in comments).

But the error message contained a clue: "Bummer! Hmm, didn't get the expected output. Be sure you're lowercasing the string and splitting on all whitespace!"

To cause "split" to use "all whitespace", leave the argument empty. Supplying a space tells it to split only on spaces.