Question

I am trying to count every character from a file and put it in a dictionary.
But it doesn’t quite work, I don’t get all characters.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os,sys

def count_chars(p):
     indx = {}
     file = open(p)

     current = 0
     for ch in file.readlines():
          c = ch[current:current+1]
          if c in indx:
               indx[c] = indx[c]+1
          else:
               indx[c] = 1           
          current+=1
     print indx

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
     for e in sys.argv[1:]:
          print e, "contains:"
          count_chars(e)
else:
     print "[#] Usage: ./aufg2.py <filename>"

Answer 1

Assuming the file you’re counting fits reasonably in memory:

import collections
with open(p) as f:
    indx = collections.Counter(f.read())

---

Otherwise, you can read it bit by bit:

import collections
with open(p) as f:
    indx = collections.Counter()
    buffer = f.read(1024)
    while buffer:
        indx.update(buffer)
        buffer = f.read(1024)