letter frequency counter / your thoughts..

[Arnaud Delobelle]

umpsumps at gmail.com writes:

> Hello,
>
> Here is my code for a letter frequency counter.  It seems bloated to
> me and any suggestions of what would be a better way (keep in my mind
> I'm a beginner) would be greatly appreciated..
>
> def valsort(x):
> 	res = []
> 	for key, value in x.items():
> 		res.append((value, key))
> 	return res
>
> def mostfreq(strng):
> 	dic = {}
> 	for letter in strng:
> 		if letter not in dic:
> 			dic.setdefault(letter, 1)
> 		else:
> 			dic[letter] += 1
> 	newd = dic.items()
> 	getvals = valsort(newd)
> 	getvals.sort()
> 	length = len(getvals)
> 	return getvals[length - 3 : length]
>
> thanks much!!

I won't comment on the algorithm, but I think you should try to find
better names for your variables.  In the snippet above you have x,
res, dic, newd, length, getvals which don't give much of a clue as to
what they are used for.

e.g.

* dic = {}
We know it's a dict, but a dict of what?

* newd = dic.items()
Sounds like 'new dictionary', but obviously isn'tas it is a list 
of key,value pairs.

* length = len(getvals)
Again, we know it's a length, but the length of what?

HTH

-- 
Arnaud