Nested for loop to match vowels by iterating over strings and lists

Question

I am trying to loop over a list, and match each character in that list with characters in a string:

wordlist = ['big', 'cats', 'like', 'really']
vowels = "aeiou"
count = 0
 for i in range(len(wordlist)):
    for j in vowels:
        if j in wordlist[i]:
            count +=1
            print(j,'occurs', count,'times')

to return "a" occurs 2 times. for each vowel but this does not work. What am i doing wrong?

I can see a single space before the first `for` declaration. Maybe this is affecting your Python's Code Indentation. — DarkCygnus, Jun 11 '16 at 00:40
What exactly is your overall goal? What are you trying to achieve? — idjaw, Jun 11 '16 at 00:41
Why all the downvotes? apologies if this is too simple of a question... — AJP, Jun 11 '16 at 01:42

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '16 at 00:45

Using a collections.Counter here is probably the most pythonic way and also avoids nested for loops

import collections
vowels = "aeiou"
wordlist = ['big', 'cats', 'like', 'really']

letters = collections.Counter("".join(wordlist))
for letter in vowels:
    print(letter, "occurs", letters.get(letter, 0), "times")

This outputs:

a occurs 2 times
e occurs 2 times
i occurs 2 times
o occurs 0 times
u occurs 0 times

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 11 '16 at 00:41

0

Here's a working version:

wordlist = ['big', 'cats', 'like', 'really']
vowels = "aeiou"
for j in vowels:
    count = 0
    for i in range(len(wordlist)):
        if j in wordlist[i]:
            count += 1
    print(j, 'occurs', count, 'times')

Note that j is a terrible name, it should really be vowel.

answered Jun 11 '16 at 00:41

Alex Hall

34,833
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Thank you Alex! I will change `j` to `vowel` as you suggest. – AJP Jun 11 '16 at 00:46
You don't need an index at all. – juanpa.arrivillaga Jun 11 '16 at 00:49
1

@juanpa.arrivillaga the point was to teach by only showing the necessary changes. – Alex Hall Jun 11 '16 at 08:00

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '16 at 00:43

0

Try this:

wordlist = ['big', 'cats', 'like', 'really']
vowels = "aeiou"        
for v in vowels:
    count = 0
    for word in wordlist:
        if v in word:
            count += 1
    print(v,'occurs', count, 'times')

results:

a occurs 2 times
e occurs 2 times
i occurs 2 times
o occurs 0 times
u occurs 0 times

answered Jun 11 '16 at 00:43

juanpa.arrivillaga

88,713
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Why the down-vote? – juanpa.arrivillaga Jun 11 '16 at 00:50
Cheers juanpa, wasnt me who downvoted you. – AJP Jun 11 '16 at 01:01

Nested for loop to match vowels by iterating over strings and lists

3 Answers3