Question

This code takes in a web url (nytimes.com), and outputs a list of the top 10 word occurrences and the number of times they appear. I am getting the top 10 words, but I am getting nil for the count. Can someone help me fix the count variable to display the number of occurrences? Thanks!

 local http = require("socket.http")
 local url = "http://www.nytimes.com"
 local body = http.request(url)
 local words = {}

 for word in string.gmatch(body,"%a+") do
   -- print(word)
   words[word] = (words[word] or 0) + 1
 end

 for word, count in pairs(words) do
  -- print(words,count)
 end

function top1(t)
   local max = 0
   local maxword 
   for word, count in pairs(t) do
     if count > max then
       max = count
       maxword = word
     end
   end 
   t[maxword] = nil
   return maxword, count
 end

 for i = 1, 10 do
   print(top1(words))
 end

Answer 1

You’re returning the wrong variable from top1() – return maxword, count should be return maxword, max.