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Python Python Collections (Retired) Dictionaries Word Count

Create a function named word_count() that takes a string. Return a dictionary with each word in the string as the key an

Guys, need help with the code. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

my_string = "I am here you are there I you you"

def word_count(my_string):
  string_lowercase =  my_string.lower()
  string_split = string_lowercase.split()
  my_dict = {}

  for word in string_split:
      if word in string_split:
        my_dict[word] = 1
      else:
        my_dict[word] += 1
  return my_dict

[MOD: added ```python formatting -cf]

3 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,454 Points

Your code is very close! In detecting if the word has been seen you need to fixed to things: search the keys of my_dict instead of string_split and reverse the conditions so that you initialize the count to 1 if not in string_split:

def word_count(my_string):
  string_lowercase =  my_string.lower()
  string_split = string_lowercase.split()
  my_dict = {}

  for word in string_split:
      if word not in my_dict:  # <-- corrected this line.
        my_dict[word] = 1
      else:
        my_dict[word] += 1
  return my_dict

You could simplify it a bit with:

def word_count(my_string):
    my_dict = {}
    for word in my_string.lower().split():
        if word in my_dict:
            my_dict[word] += 1
        else:
            my_dict[word] = 1
    return my_dict

Chris, thanks for your help.