Please always post back to the list. > Nope, strip() was intended so we get a list back instead of a string. Need > the list for iteration down below that.
>> > para = paragraph.strip('.').strip(',').strip().split() >> I think you want replace not strip. >> >> See http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods No, you are wrong. If you had looked at the link (or tested the code) you would find strip() does not do what you think it does. What do you mean by "we get a list back instead of a string"? strip does not return a list...it returns a string. split is what returns the list for iteration. >>> paragraph = "This paragraph contains words once, more than once, and >>> possibly not at all either. Figure that one out. " >>> para = paragraph.strip('.').strip(',').strip().split() >>> print para ['This', 'paragraph', 'contains', 'words', 'once,', 'more', 'than', 'once,', 'and', 'possibly', 'not', 'at', 'all', 'either.', 'Figure', 'that', 'one', 'out.'] Note the inclusion of 'once,' and 'either.' and 'out.'. Use replace to remove punctuation instead and then just compare words. Most probably you want to lower() or upper() the entire paragraph to be thorough, otherwise 'This' and 'this' will be counted separately. Ramit Ramit Prasad | JPMorgan Chase Investment Bank | Currencies Technology 712 Main Street | Houston, TX 77002 work phone: 713 - 216 - 5423 -- This email is confidential and subject to important disclaimers and conditions including on offers for the purchase or sale of securities, accuracy and completeness of information, viruses, confidentiality, legal privilege, and legal entity disclaimers, available at http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures/email. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor