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

Posted by Knut Gjærde
Knut Gjærde
6,878 Points

My code works in shell, but not on Treehouse

As you can see from the code under, it returns a dictionary exactly like instructed. It works in shell, but not at Treehouse. Could somebody give me a clue?

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(in_arg):

    temp = in_arg.lower()
    words = temp.split(' ')

    out_dict = {}

    for word in words:
        count = 1
        if word in out_dict:
            count = out_dict[word] + 1
            out_dict.update({word: count})

        elif word not in out_dict:
            out_dict.update({word: count})

    return out_dict

1 Answer

Jon Mirow
Jon Mirow
9,864 Points
Jon Mirow
Jon Mirow
9,864 Points

Hi there!

Don't worry, you got it - great job!

The catch on this (that comes up ALL the time) is that you have to split on all whitespace not just spaces. Just change your split method call from split(" ") to split()

For example, with split(" "):

>>>print(word_count("I do not like it sam\ni am"))
{'i': 1, 'do': 1, 'not': 1, 'like': 1, 'it': 1, 'sam\ni': 1, 'am': 1}

And with split():

>>>print(word_count("I do not like it sam\ni am"))
{'i': 2, 'do': 1, 'not': 1, 'like': 1, 'it': 1, 'sam': 1, 'am': 1}

Hope it helps - good job :) Jon