5 most common words in text file python

Question

i have this code to search for the 5 most common words in a text file but i cant use the sort and reverse functions at the end of the program... how would i avoid using them?

words = open('romeo.txt').read().lower().split()


uniques = []
for word in words:
  if word not in uniques:
    uniques.append(word)


counts = []
for unique in uniques:
  count = 0              
  for word in words:     
    if word == unique:   
      count += 1         
  counts.append((count, unique))

counts.sort()            
counts.reverse()         

for i in range(min(5, len(counts))):
  count, word = counts[i]
  print('%s %d' % (word, count))

Answer 1

from collections import Counter

c = Counter(words)
c.most_common(5)

Answer 2

Use the sorted() function and save the results in a variable then reverse it like this:

counts = sorted(counts, reverse=True)

That line of code will sort the list and reverse it for you and save the results in counts. Then you can use your count as required.