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

I am stuck, how to return a Dictionary from a string?

The only way I count figure out is to use some library called collections. but it does not return the values required to pass the task. I hope someone can explain this for me!

Actually Treehouse team did not focus well on this topic!

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 (x):
    listb=[]
    lista=[]
    countt=0
    counter=[]
    lista=x.split()
    count=Counter(lista)
    return count

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

Maybe a few hints will help get you going:

  • you could start with a new, empty dictionary
  • splitting the string in a list was a good idea, you could then use the list in a loop
  • in the loop you could check if the word is in the dictionary already
  • for a word in the dictionary, you could increment the associated value
  • if the word is not in the dictionary, you could add it with a value of 1
  • after the loop finishes, you could return the dictionary