I'm getting the wrong answer but my code runs without error, what am i missing/not seeing here?

Question

I'm working my way through this track and struggling a bit with code challenges, but i'm getting there.

Usually taking a break and coming back does wonders for me.

Anyway... i've tried this problem and my code appears to run fine but gives me the wrong answer at the end.

I'm guessing its because i am doing something wrong with the counter and it isnt updating the end value correctly.

How do i fix this?

word_count.py

#here is my string
a_string = "This is a test string that repeats words like This and is and a and test to give me interesting counter results"

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#create function named word_count() that takes a string argument
def word_count(a_string):
  #create a dictionary that will be returned
  my_dictionary = {}
  #split the string using the .split() method/fuctnion (Still not sure on terminology)
  split_string = a_string.split()
  #loop through the words in the split string
  for word in split_string:
    #create a counter for the number of times a word appears
    counter = 0
    #go through and check if the word appears more than once
    if word in split_string:
      counter +=1
    #make the word the key and the counter the value and update into the dictionary
    my_dictionary.update({word: counter})
  return my_dictionary

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#call the function with my string
word_count(a_string)

Answer 1 · 2015-11-11T14:44:59Z

November 11, 2015 2:44pm

I went about it a different way in the end. I figured that its easier to check if a word is in the dictionary and if it isn't, add it to the dictionary with the value of 1. If it already exists, increase the value by one.

For anyone interested, i ended up with this:

word_count.py

#here is my string
a_string = "This is a test string that repeats words like This and is and a and test to give me interesting counter results"

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#create function named word_count() that takes a string argument
def word_count(a_string):
  #split the string and make it all lower case (had errors with this earlier so made it all lower)
  split_string = a_string.lower().split()
  #create an empty dictionary to store the words and values
  my_dictionary = {}

  # make a loop that goes through each word in the split string
  for word in split_string:
    #if it does exist, increase the value by 1.
    if word in my_dictionary:
      my_dictionary[word] += 1 
    #if the word doesnt exist in the dictionary, add it with the value of 1.
    else:
      my_dictionary[word] = 1      

  #print the dictionary    
  print(my_dictionary)
  #return the dictionary
  return my_dictionary

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#call the function with my string
word_count(a_string)

Answer 2 · 2015-11-11T12:12:38Z

November 11, 2015 12:12pm

Your code isn't working out how many of each word is in the string, but just adding the word to the dictionary; the count also goes up with every word in the string, and in the dictionary you'll have each item with the same value. Example: The string input is: 'This is my string'

{'This': 4, 'is': 4, 'my': 4, 'string': 4}

Your for loop can't tell the difference between each word, essentially it is thinking: ~For every word in this string, I add 1 to the count and add the word to the dictionary along with the value of the count

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jackmartin3

jackmartin3

I'm getting the wrong answer but my code runs without error, what am i missing/not seeing here?

2 Answers

jackmartin3

jackmartin3

Steve Hunter

Steve Hunter

Josh Keenan

Josh Keenan

jackmartin3

jackmartin3

Steve Hunter

Steve Hunter