Question

I am trying to learn python and get good at algorithms. This is my first language.

for example: take “baggage” and sort into “aabeggg”

string = "baggage"
count = [0] * len(string)

for x in string:
    num_value = ord(x)
    count[num_value] += 1

I think the above is a start…but I’m not really sort how to go about it.

Answer 1

collections.Counter is a great way to solve this, but here is a way to get you a bit further in the direction you are heading

string = "baggage"
count = [0] * 256  # This should be big enough to hold counters for every 8 bit character

for x in string:
    num_value = ord(x)
    count[num_value] += 1

for i in range(256):  # loop through all the possible 8 numbers
    if count[i]: 
        print chr(i)*count[i]

# you can join them all back into a string like this
newstr = ''.join(chr(i)*c for i,c in enumerate(count))