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    Python Program to Count Word Frequency Using a Dictionary

    hardDictionariesPython

    Dictionaries map a key to a value — perfect for counting how often each word appears.

    The question

    Read a sentence of lowercase words separated by single spaces. Count how many times each word occurs using a dictionary, and print each word and its count in alphabetical order, one per line, like: word count

    The code

    program.py

    words = input().split()
count = {}
for w in words:
    count[w] = count.get(w, 0) + 1
for w in sorted(count):
    print(w, count[w])
    Try it Yourself »

    Input

    milk milk sun milk one sun code

    Output

    code 1
milk 3
one 1
sun 2

    How it works

    1. 1split() turns the sentence into a list of words.
    2. 2count.get(w, 0) returns the current count, or 0 for a new word; add 1 and store it back.
    3. 3sorted(count) gives the words in alphabetical order for printing.

    Common mistakes

    • Writing count[w] += 1 for a new word — Python raises KeyError because the key does not exist yet.
    • Printing the dictionary directly, which does not give one word per line.

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