Can't figure this out

Thanks for your help Brendan Whiting.

I know what the split() and lower() methods do but I'm not sure what to use them on.

Here's what I've got so far:

# 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(string):
    word_list = 0
    dictionary = {}
    for word in string:
        word_list += 1

You can call those methods on the string parameter: string.lower().split(). You'll end up with a list of lowercase words.

Also, what we want to end up with is so that they dictionary has key value pairs where the key is a word and the value is the number of times that word occurs. The example they gave us is that word_count("I do not like it Sam I Am") would produce {'i': 2, 'do': 1, 'it': 1, 'sam': 1, 'like': 1, 'not': 1, 'am': 1}. So as you loop through the words, you want to be making changes to the dictionary object, rather than the word_list.

One way to do this is check to see if that word already is a key in the dictionary. If it is, increment the value by one. If it's not, add that key to the dictionary with the value 1.

Hi Brendan.

I've cracked this with your help and the help of psculthorpe.

Thank you both!

split(" ") is only going to split on space characters. split() with no arguments will default to splitting on any whitespace character, including tabs and new line characters.