Letter Count on a string - python

Python newb here. I m trying to count the number of letter "a"s in a given string. Code is below. It keeps returning 1 instead 3 in string "banana". Any input appreciated.
def count_letters(word, char):
count = 0
while count <= len(word):
for char in word:
if char == word[count]:
count += 1
return count
print count_letters('banana','a')

The other answers show what's wrong with your code. But there's also a built-in way to do this, if you weren't just doing this for an exercise:
>>> 'banana'.count('a')
3
Danben gave this corrected version:
def count_letters(word, char):
count = 0
for c in word:
if char == c:
count += 1
return count
Here are some other ways to do it, hopefully they will teach you more about Python!
Similar, but shorter for loop. Exploits the fact that booleans can turn into 1 if true and 0 if false:
def count_letters(word, char):
count = 0
for c in word:
count += (char == c)
return count
Short for loops can generally be turned into list/generator comprehensions. This creates a list of integers corresponding to each letter, with 0 if the letter doesn't match char and 1 if it does, and then sums them:
def count_letters(word, char):
return sum(char == c for c in word)
The next one filters out all the characters that don't match char, and counts how many are left:
def count_letters(word, char):
return len([c for c in word if c == char])

One problem is that you are using count to refer both to the position in the word that you are checking, and the number of char you have seen, and you are using char to refer both to the input character you are checking, and the current character in the string. Use separate variables instead.
Also, move the return statement outside the loop; otherwise you will always return after checking the first character.
Finally, you only need one loop to iterate over the string. Get rid of the outer while loop and you will not need to track the position in the string.
Taking these suggestions, your code would look like this:
def count_letters(word, char):
count = 0
for c in word:
if char == c:
count += 1
return count

A simple way is as follows:
def count_letters(word, char):
return word.count(char)
Or, there's another way count each element directly:
from collections import Counter
Counter('banana')
Of course, you can specify one element, e.g.
Counter('banana')['a']

Your return is in your for loop! Be careful with indentation, you want the line return count to be outside the loop. Because the for loop goes through all characters in word, the outer while loop is completely unneeded.
A cleaned-up version:
def count_letters(word, to_find):
count = 0
for char in word:
if char == to_find:
count += 1
return count

You have a number of problems:
There's a problem with your indentation as others already pointed out.
There's no need to have nested loops. Just one loop is enough.
You're using char to mean two different things, but the char variable in the for loop will overwrite the data from the parameter.
This code fixes all these errors:
def count_letters(word, char):
count = 0
for c in word:
if char == c:
count += 1
return count
A much more concise way to write this is to use a generator expression:
def count_letters(word, char):
return sum(char == c for c in word)
Or just use the built-in method count that does this for you:
print 'abcbac'.count('c')

I see a few things wrong.
You reuse the identifier char, so that will cause issues.
You're saying if char == word[count] instead of word[some index]
You return after the first iteration of the for loop!
You don't even need the while. If you rename the char param to search,
for char in word:
if char == search:
count += 1
return count

Alternatively You can use:
mystring = 'banana'
number = mystring.count('a')

count_letters=""
number=count_letters.count("")
print number

"banana".count("ana") returns 1 instead of 2 !
I think the method iterates over the string (or the list) with a step equal to the length of the substring so it doesn't see this kind of stuff.
So if you want a "full count" you have to implement your own counter with the correct loop of step 1
Correct me if I'm wrong...

def count_letter(word, char):
count = 0
for char in word:
if char == word:
count += 1
return count #Your return is inside your for loop
r = count_word("banana", "a")
print r
3

x=str(input("insert string"))
c=0
for i in x:
if 'a' in i:
c=c+1
print(c)

Following program takes a string as input and output a pandas DataFrame, which represents the letter count.
Sample Input
hello
Sample Output
 char Freq.
0 h  1
1 e  1
2 l  2
3 o  1
import pandas as pd
def count_letters(word, char):
return word.count(char)
text = input()
text_split = text.split()
list1 = []
list2 = []
for i in text_split:
for j in i:
counter = count_letters (text, j)
list1.append(j)
list2.append(counter)
dictn = dict(zip(list1, list2))
df = pd.DataFrame (dictn.items(), columns = ['char', 'freq.'])
print (df)

Related

How to make a for loop iterate through each item in a string with an if statement?

I'm trying to make a function that takes in a string from a user and then outputs the same string. However for each letter in an even position it outputs the corresponding lower case letter, and for each letter in an odd position it outputs the corresponding uppercase letter. Keep in mind only one word will be passed through it at a time.
I've tried to create a for loop with an if statement nested within it, but so far, the for loop stops after iterating through the first letter. My code is below:
def converter(string):
for letters in string:
if len(letters) % 2 == 0:
return letters.lower()
elif len(letters)% 2 != 0:
return letters.upper()
When I run the code:
converter('app')
The output I get is 'A'
The expected output should be 'aPp'
The first thing you need to know is that in Python, strings are immutable. So "modifying" a string means you have to build a new string from scratch in (here, I call that newstring).
Second, you are misunderstanding the loop. You are saying for letters in string. This loop iterates over each letter of the string. On the first iteration, letters is the first letter of the strong. You then convert it to upper case (since the length of a single letter is always 1), and return it. You aren't reaching the rest of the letters! In the code below, I change the plurality to just letter to make this idea clear.
This amends all of those problems:
def converter(string):
newstring = ""
for i, letter in enumerate(string):
if i % 2 == 0:
newstring += letter.lower()
elif i % 2 != 0:
newstring += letter.upper()
return newstring
This can be boiled down to a nice list comprehension:
def converter(string):
return "".join([letter.lower() if i % 2 == 0 else letter.upper()
for i, letter in enumerate(string)])
In [1]: def converter(string):
...: return ''.join([j.upper() if i % 2 == 1 else j.lower() for i, j in enumerate(string)])
In [2]: converter('apple')
Out[2]: 'aPpLe'
''.join([s.lower() if c % 2 == 0 else s.upper() for c, s in enumerate('apple')])
# returns 'aPpLe'
first check for the condition, then iterate through the string using the nice old enumerate built-in.

How to write a function to count how many times a character occurs in a string?

This is what I have so far:
def count2(char,text):
if len(text)==0:
return 0
else:
if char==count2(char,text[:-1]):
return (1+count2(char,text[:-1]))
else:
return False
It will just go to false, but I am trying to count how many times "char" equals each character of "text."
Your base case looks correct. For your recursive case, lets take a look at the logic. There are two possible cases:
If the first character of the current string is the one you are looking for. In this case, you should return 1 + the count of the character in the rest of the string.
If the first character is not equal, then you should just return the count of the character in the rest of the string.
The function thus becomes
def count2(char,text):
if len(text)== 0:
return 0
count = 1 if text[0] == char else 0
return count + count2(char, text[1:])
Python has a neat way of treating True/False as 1/0, so you could simply write something like this:
def numberofcharacters(char, text):
if len(text) == 0:
return 0
return (text[-1] == char) + numberofcharacters(char, text[:-1])
def count2(char, text):
charCount = 0
for i in text:
if i == char:
charCount += 1
return(charCount)
Here's my two sense on the matter, a less complicated solution.
Best way to achieve this will be using string.count() function as:
>>> 'engineering'.count('e')
3
But I believe it is the part of some assignment. Since you are specific for using recursive function, below is the sample code to achieve this as:
def numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string):
if my_string:
if my_char == my_string[0]:
return 1 + numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string[1:])
else:
return numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string[1:])
else:
return 0
This solution can be further simplified as:
def numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string):
return ((my_char == my_string[0]) + numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string[1:])) if my_string else 0
Sample run:
>>> numberofcharacters('e','engineering')
3
Using a list comprehension makes things clear :
def numberofcharacters(my_char, my_string):
return len([c for c in my_string if c == my_char])

Python code for finding number of vowels in the parameter

I am a python newbie, and am struggling for what I thought was a simple code. My instructions are, Write a function that takes one string parameter word and will return the number of vowels in the string.
Also, just for clarification, supercat is my one string parameter word.
I've been working on this code for some time, and it's gotten a little jumbled.
This is what I have so far.
vowelletters = ["A","E","I","O","U","a","e","i","o","u"]
def isVowel(supercat):
if supercat in vowel:
return True
else:
return False
print isVowel(supercat)
def countvowel(supercat):
count = 0
for index in super cat:
if isVowel(vowelletters): count += 1
return count
y = countvowel(super cat)
print(y)
you can first make the string to test lowercase() so that you don't have to check for capital vowels (this make it more efficient). Next you can count() how many times each vowel is in the teststring and make a final sum() to get a total.
vowelletters = ["a","e","i","o","u"]
teststring= "hellO world foo bAr"
count = sum(teststring.lower().count(v) for v in vowelletters)
print count #6
You can place everything in a function to easily reuse the code.
def countVowels(mystring):
vowelletters = ["a","e","i","o","u"]
return sum(mystring.lower().count(v) for v in vowelletters)
Spaces in variable names not allowed, I would say:
for index in super cat:
and
y = countvowel(super cat)
It looks to me as if your indentation has problems and you left an extra space in there. (super cat instead of supercat)
You also used vowelletters instead of index in countvowel() and forgot to use the global statement in isVowel().
vowelletters = ["A","E","I","O","U","a","e","i","o","u"]
def isVowel(supercat):
global vowelletters
if supercat in vowelletters:
return True
else:
return False
print isVowel(supercat) # This isn't executed
# because it is after a return statement.
def countvowel(supercat):
count = 0
for index in supercat:
if isVowel(index): count += 1
return count
y = countvowel("supercat")
print(y)
how about this:
vowelletters = ("a","e","i","o","u")
def countvowel(word):
word = word.lower()
count = 0
for char in word:
if char in vowelletters:
count += 1
return count
print countvowel('super cat') # prints 3
or using the list comprehension:
vowelletters = ("a","e","i","o","u")
def countvowel(word):
word = word.lower()
vowels = [char for char in word if char in vowelletters]
return len(vowels)
You can simplify this function that you're writing
def countvowel(supercat):
count = 0
for i in range(len(supercat)-1):
if supercat[i] in "AEIOUaeiou":
count += 1
print(count)
You can use sum() and a generator. 
def countVowels(word):
return sum(1 for c in word if c in "AEIOUaeiou")
print(countVowels('supercat'))

Count number of occurrences of a substring in a string

How can I count the number of times a given substring is present within a string in Python?
For example:
>>> 'foo bar foo'.numberOfOccurrences('foo')
2
To get indices of the substrings, see How to find all occurrences of a substring?.
string.count(substring), like in:
>>> "abcdabcva".count("ab")
2
This is for non overlapping occurrences.
If you need to count overlapping occurrences, you'd better check the answers here, or just check my other answer below.
s = 'arunununghhjj'
sb = 'nun'
results = 0
sub_len = len(sb)
for i in range(len(s)):
if s[i:i+sub_len] == sb:
results += 1
print results
Depending what you really mean, I propose the following solutions:
You mean a list of space separated sub-strings and want to know what is the sub-string position number among all sub-strings:
s = 'sub1 sub2 sub3'
s.split().index('sub2')
>>> 1
You mean the char-position of the sub-string in the string:
s.find('sub2')
>>> 5
You mean the (non-overlapping) counts of appearance of a su-bstring:
s.count('sub2')
>>> 1
s.count('sub')
>>> 3
The best way to find overlapping sub-strings in a given string is to use a regular expression. With lookahead, it will find all the overlapping matches using the regular expression library's findall(). Here, left is the substring and right is the string to match.
>>> len(re.findall(r'(?=aa)', 'caaaab'))
3
To find overlapping occurences of a substring in a string in Python 3, this algorithm will do:
def count_substring(string,sub_string):
l=len(sub_string)
count=0
for i in range(len(string)-len(sub_string)+1):
if(string[i:i+len(sub_string)] == sub_string ):
count+=1
return count
I myself checked this algorithm and it worked.
You can count the frequency using two ways:
Using the count() in str:
a.count(b)
Or, you can use:
len(a.split(b))-1
Where a is the string and b is the substring whose frequency is to be calculated.
Scenario 1: Occurrence of a word in a sentence.
eg: str1 = "This is an example and is easy". The occurrence of the word "is". lets str2 = "is"
count = str1.count(str2)
Scenario 2 : Occurrence of pattern in a sentence.
string = "ABCDCDC"
substring = "CDC"
def count_substring(string,sub_string):
len1 = len(string)
len2 = len(sub_string)
j =0
counter = 0
while(j < len1):
if(string[j] == sub_string[0]):
if(string[j:j+len2] == sub_string):
counter += 1
j += 1
return counter
Thanks!
The current best answer involving method count doesn't really count for overlapping occurrences and doesn't care about empty sub-strings as well.
For example:
>>> a = 'caatatab'
>>> b = 'ata'
>>> print(a.count(b)) #overlapping
1
>>>print(a.count('')) #empty string
9
The first answer should be 2 not 1, if we consider the overlapping substrings.
As for the second answer it's better if an empty sub-string returns 0 as the asnwer.
The following code takes care of these things.
def num_of_patterns(astr,pattern):
astr, pattern = astr.strip(), pattern.strip()
if pattern == '': return 0
ind, count, start_flag = 0,0,0
while True:
try:
if start_flag == 0:
ind = astr.index(pattern)
start_flag = 1
else:
ind += 1 + astr[ind+1:].index(pattern)
count += 1
except:
break
return count
Now when we run it:
>>>num_of_patterns('caatatab', 'ata') #overlapping
2
>>>num_of_patterns('caatatab', '') #empty string
0
>>>num_of_patterns('abcdabcva','ab') #normal
2
The question isn't very clear, but I'll answer what you are, on the surface, asking.
A string S, which is L characters long, and where S[1] is the first character of the string and S[L] is the last character, has the following substrings:
The null string ''. There is one of these.
For every value A from 1 to L, for every value B from A to L, the string S[A]..S[B]
(inclusive). There are L + L-1 + L-2 + ... 1 of these strings, for a
total of 0.5*L*(L+1).
Note that the second item includes S[1]..S[L],
i.e. the entire original string S.
So, there are 0.5*L*(L+1) + 1 substrings within a string of length L. Render that expression in Python, and you have the number of substrings present within the string.
One way is to use re.subn. For example, to count the number of
occurrences of 'hello' in any mix of cases you can do:
import re
_, count = re.subn(r'hello', '', astring, flags=re.I)
print('Found', count, 'occurrences of "hello"')
How about a one-liner with a list comprehension? Technically its 93 characters long, spare me PEP-8 purism. The regex.findall answer is the most readable if its a high level piece of code. If you're building something low level and don't want dependencies, this one is pretty lean and mean. I'm giving the overlapping answer. Obviously just use count like the highest score answer if there isn't overlap.
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
return len([i for i in range(len(string)) if string[i:i+len(sub_string)] == sub_string])
If you want to count all the sub-string (including overlapped) then use this method.
import re
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
regex = '(?='+sub_string+')'
# print(regex)
return len(re.findall(regex,string))
I will keep my accepted answer as the "simple and obvious way to do it", however, it does not cover overlapping occurrences.
Finding out those can be done naively, with multiple checking of the slices - as in:
sum("GCAAAAAGH"[i:].startswith("AAA") for i in range(len("GCAAAAAGH")))
which yields 3.
Or it can be done by trick use of regular expressions, as can be seen at How to use regex to find all overlapping matches - and it can also make for fine code golfing.
This is my "hand made" count for overlapping occurrences of patterns in a string which tries not to be extremely naive (at least it does not create new string objects at each interaction):
def find_matches_overlapping(text, pattern):
lpat = len(pattern) - 1
matches = []
text = array("u", text)
pattern = array("u", pattern)
indexes = {}
for i in range(len(text) - lpat):
if text[i] == pattern[0]:
indexes[i] = -1
for index, counter in list(indexes.items()):
counter += 1
if text[i] == pattern[counter]:
if counter == lpat:
matches.append(index)
del indexes[index]
else:
indexes[index] = counter
else:
del indexes[index]
return matches
def count_matches(text, pattern):
return len(find_matches_overlapping(text, pattern))
For overlapping count we can use use:
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
count=0
beg=0
while(string.find(sub_string,beg)!=-1) :
count=count+1
beg=string.find(sub_string,beg)
beg=beg+1
return count
For non-overlapping case we can use count() function:
string.count(sub_string)
Overlapping occurences:
def olpcount(string,pattern,case_sensitive=True):
if case_sensitive != True:
string = string.lower()
pattern = pattern.lower()
l = len(pattern)
ct = 0
for c in range(0,len(string)):
if string[c:c+l] == pattern:
ct += 1
return ct
test = 'my maaather lies over the oceaaan'
print test
print olpcount(test,'a')
print olpcount(test,'aa')
print olpcount(test,'aaa')
Results:
my maaather lies over the oceaaan
6
4
2
Here's a solution that works for both non-overlapping and overlapping occurrences. To clarify: an overlapping substring is one whose last character is identical to its first character.
def substr_count(st, sub):
# If a non-overlapping substring then just
# use the standard string `count` method
# to count the substring occurences
if sub[0] != sub[-1]:
return st.count(sub)
# Otherwise, create a copy of the source string,
# and starting from the index of the first occurence
# of the substring, adjust the source string to start
# from subsequent occurences of the substring and keep
# keep count of these occurences
_st = st[::]
start = _st.index(sub)
cnt = 0
while start is not None:
cnt += 1
try:
_st = _st[start + len(sub) - 1:]
start = _st.index(sub)
except (ValueError, IndexError):
return cnt
return cnt
If you're looking for a power solution that works every case this function should work:
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
ans = 0
for i in range(len(string)-(len(sub_string)-1)):
if sub_string == string[i:len(sub_string)+i]:
ans += 1
return ans
If you want to find out the count of substring inside any string; please use below code.
The code is easy to understand that's why i skipped the comments. :)
string=raw_input()
sub_string=raw_input()
start=0
answer=0
length=len(string)
index=string.find(sub_string,start,length)
while index<>-1:
start=index+1
answer=answer+1
index=string.find(sub_string,start,length)
print answer
You could use the startswith method:
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
x = 0
for i in range(len(string)):
if string[i:].startswith(sub_string):
x += 1
return x
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
inc = 0
for i in range(0, len(string)):
slice_object = slice(i,len(sub_string)+i)
count = len(string[slice_object])
if(count == len(sub_string)):
if(sub_string == string[slice_object]):
inc = inc + 1
return inc
if __name__ == '__main__':
string = input().strip()
sub_string = input().strip()
count = count_substring(string, sub_string)
print(count)
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
k=len(string)
m=len(sub_string)
i=0
l=0
count=0
while l<k:
if string[l:l+m]==sub_string:
count=count+1
l=l+1
return count
if __name__ == '__main__':
string = input().strip()
sub_string = input().strip()
count = count_substring(string, sub_string)
print(count)
2+ others have already provided this solution, and I even upvoted one of them, but mine is probably the easiest for newbies to understand.
def count_substring(string, sub_string):
slen = len(string)
sslen = len(sub_string)
range_s = slen - sslen + 1
count = 0
for i in range(range_s):
if string[i:i+sslen] == sub_string:
count += 1
return count
I'm not sure if this is something looked at already, but I thought of this as a solution for a word that is 'disposable':
for i in xrange(len(word)):
if word[:len(term)] == term:
count += 1
word = word[1:]
print count
Where word is the word you are searching in and term is the term you are looking for
string="abc"
mainstr="ncnabckjdjkabcxcxccccxcxcabc"
count=0
for i in range(0,len(mainstr)):
k=0
while(k<len(string)):
if(string[k]==mainstr[i+k]):
k+=1
else:
break
if(k==len(string)):
count+=1;
print(count)
my_string = """Strings are amongst the most popular data types in Python.
We can create the strings by enclosing characters in quotes.
Python treats single quotes the same as double quotes."""
Count = my_string.lower().strip("\n").split(" ").count("string")
Count = my_string.lower().strip("\n").split(" ").count("strings")
print("The number of occurance of word String is : " , Count)
print("The number of occurance of word Strings is : " , Count)
For a simple string with space delimitation, using Dict would be quite fast, please see the code as below
def getStringCount(mnstr:str, sbstr:str='')->int:
""" Assumes two inputs string giving the string and
substring to look for number of occurances
Returns the number of occurances of a given string
"""
x = dict()
x[sbstr] = 0
sbstr = sbstr.strip()
for st in mnstr.split(' '):
if st not in [sbstr]:
continue
try:
x[st]+=1
except KeyError:
x[st] = 1
return x[sbstr]
s = 'foo bar foo test one two three foo bar'
getStringCount(s,'foo')
Below logic will work for all string & special characters
def cnt_substr(inp_str, sub_str):
inp_join_str = ''.join(inp_str.split())
sub_join_str = ''.join(sub_str.split())
return inp_join_str.count(sub_join_str)
print(cnt_substr("the sky is $blue and not greenthe sky is $blue and not green", "the sky"))
Here's the solution in Python 3 and case insensitive:
s = 'foo bar foo'.upper()
sb = 'foo'.upper()
results = 0
sub_len = len(sb)
for i in range(len(s)):
if s[i:i+sub_len] == sb:
results += 1
print(results)
j = 0
while i < len(string):
sub_string_out = string[i:len(sub_string)+j]
if sub_string == sub_string_out:
count += 1
i += 1
j += 1
return count
#counting occurence of a substring in another string (overlapping/non overlapping)
s = input('enter the main string: ')# e.g. 'bobazcbobobegbobobgbobobhaklpbobawanbobobobob'
p=input('enter the substring: ')# e.g. 'bob'
counter=0
c=0
for i in range(len(s)-len(p)+1):
for j in range(len(p)):
if s[i+j]==p[j]:
if c<len(p):
c=c+1
if c==len(p):
counter+=1
c=0
break
continue
else:
break
print('number of occurences of the substring in the main string is: ',counter)

Exercise 7.9 in "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (python)" measuring occurrences of a character in a string

The question is how to write a program that measures how many times a character appears in a string in a generalizable way in python.
The code that I wrote:
def countLetters(str, ch):
count=0
index=0
for ch in str:
if ch==str[index]:
count=count+1
index=index+1
print count
when I use this function, it measures the length of the string instead of how many times the character occurs in the string. What did I do wrong? What is the right way to write this code?
You are over-writing your 'ch' variable:
def countLetters(str, ch):
# ^ the character you are looking for
count=0
index=0
for ch in str:
# ^ the string character you are trying to check
if ch==str[index]: # ???
count=count+1
index=index+1
print count
(also, it is usually more useful to return the value than to just print it).
The built-in method is str.count:
"aaabb".count("a") -> 3
How you could rewrite your code:
def countLetters(search_in, search_for):
count = 0
for s in search_in: # iterate by string char, not by index
if s==search_for:
count += 1
return count
and a quick pythonic replacement:
def countLetters(search_in, search_for):
return sum(1 for s in search_in if s==search_for)
Think logically about what happens when you run your code: since the test in the loop succeeds on the first iteration, it is guaranteed to succeed every time! You are simply checking that iteration in Python works.
The correct formulation is
def count(s, input):
count = 0
for c in s:
if c == input:
count += 1
Or, equivalently,
def count(input):
return sum(c == input for c in s)
But you could just as well do:
s.count(c)
Your loop is wrong.
This should work:
for s in str:
if ch == s:
...
this way index variable will not be used and you can remove it. If you want to use index then change for into:
for index in range(len(str)):
... (rest is OK but ...)
... (do not increase index in loop body)
You can also increment variable by += operator like:
cnt += 1
So finished code will look like:
def countLetters(str, ch):
count = 0
for s in str:
if ch == s:
count += 1
print count
Completely untested:
def count_letters(s, c):
return sum(1 for x in s if x == c)

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