Learning Python

Just started to pick up on Python,

I am sure everyone who took COSC 2320 with Dr. Anderson remembers the word count program. Well after going through some of the tutorials of python here is the same program in python

Not only is it smaller, but its also easier to understand. Hopefully more to follow

import re
import string

#dictionary to store words and their counts
word_count = {}

#read in text document line by line
for line in open("trial.txt").readlines():
    
    #remove leading and trailing whitespace
    line = string.strip(line)

    #split the string into words
    #based on whitespace, punctuation, digits
    for word in re.split("["+string.whitespace+string.punctuation+string.digits+"]",line):
        
        #make the word lower case
        word = string.lower(word)
        
        #check if it is actually a word
        if re.match("^["+string.lowercase+"]+$",word):
            
            #increment count if true
            if word_count.has_key(word):
                word_count[word]+=1
                
            #else add entry
            else:
                word_count[word] = 1

for w in word_count:
    print w, ":" ,word_count[w]

Edit: Some more playing around

import re
import string

word_count = {}

text = open("trial.txt").read();

#list of words delimited by whitespace, punctuation and digits
#iterate by words in returned list from split
#lower case all the words in the text
words =  re.split("["+string.whitespace+string.punctuation+string.digits+"]",string.lower(text))

#go through the list
for i in range(0,len(words)-1):
    
    #as long as the word in the list is a word and is not already a key
    if re.match("^["+string.lowercase+"]+$",words[i]) and not word_count.has_key(words[i]):
        
        #add to the dictionary and get the count from the list
        word_count[words[i]] = words.count(words[i])

for w in word_count:
    print w,":",word_count[w]