Skip to content

Level 0 / Project 06 - Word Counter Basic

Home: README

Learn Your Way

Read Build Watch Test Review Visualize Try
Concept This project — Quiz Flashcards Diagram Browser

Estimated time: 20 minutes

Focus

  • string splitting and counting

Why this project exists

Count words, lines, and characters in a text file, then find the most frequent words. You will practise string splitting, dictionary-based counting, and building summary statistics.

Run (copy/paste)

Use <repo-root> as the folder containing this repository's README.md.

cd <repo-root>/projects/level-0/06-word-counter-basic
python project.py
pytest -q

Type or paste text, then press Enter on a blank line to see the analysis.

Expected terminal output

=== Word Counter ===
Type or paste text below. Enter a blank line when done.

Python is a great language.
Python is easy to learn.
Python is powerful and fun.

=== Word Count Summary ===
  Lines:      3
  Words:      16
  Characters: 80
  Unique:     11

  Top words:
    python: 3
    is: 3
    a: 1
    great: 1
    language: 1
5 passed

Expected artifacts

  • Passing tests
  • Updated notes.md

Checkpoint: Baseline code runs and all tests pass. Commit your work before continuing.

Alter it (required) — Extension

  1. Add an "average word length" metric to analyse_text().
  2. Ask the user "How many top words to show? " and use that number instead of the default 5.
  3. Re-run script and tests.

Break it (required) — Core

  1. Enter no text (just press Enter immediately) -- does analyse_text() crash?
  2. Enter only punctuation like !!! ??? ... -- are those counted as words?
  3. Enter unicode characters like emojis -- does count_characters() count them correctly?

Fix it (required) — Core

  1. Add a guard for empty text that returns zero counts without dividing.
  2. Ensure word_frequencies() strips punctuation before counting so "hello!" and "hello" are the same word.
  3. Add a test for the empty-text edge case.

Checkpoint: All modifications done, tests still pass. Good time to review your changes.

Explain it (teach-back)

  1. Why does word_frequencies() use .lower() before counting?
  2. What does dict.get(key, 0) + 1 do and why is it better than checking if key in dict?
  3. Why separate count_words(), count_lines(), and count_characters() into their own functions?
  4. Where would word counting appear in real software (search engines, document analysis, readability scores)?

Mastery check

You can move on when you can: - run baseline without docs, - explain one core function line-by-line, - break and recover in one session, - keep tests passing after your change.

Stuck? Ask AI

If you are stuck after trying for 20 minutes, use one of these prompts:

  • "I am working on Word Counter Basic. I got this error: [paste error]. Can you explain what this error means without giving me the fix?"
  • "I am trying to count word frequencies using a dictionary. Can you show me how dict.get(key, 0) works with a simple example that is not about words?"
  • "Can you explain the difference between .split() and .split(' ') with examples?"
← Prev Home Next →