Question

I am new to python and I’m trying to write a simple word counter using a dictionary. I am wondering why the following code will not work:

while word != None:
      wordObject = Word()
      wordObject.setWord(word)
      if dictionary.has_key(wordObject.getWord():
            setCount = dictionary[wordObject.getWord()]
            setCount.setCount()

If I leave this as is it never enters the if statement, if I put a key value in the has key method then it will enter the statement and say that I have invalid syntax on my setCount variable. I am trying to set that variable to the object stored at the key value in the dictionary I made and then increment the words count with the setCount method. Thanks.

Answer 1

I can’t see your whole code but can predict you must be having some method setCount in wordObject and falsely using a local variable. Changing to wordObject.setCount() may help otherwise a simple

count = 0
while word != None:
      wordObject = Word()
      wordObject.setWord(word)
      if dictionary.has_key(wordObject.getWord():
            setCount=dictionary[wordObject.getWord()]
            count += 1

is enough to store the count.