Return sum of unique word occurrences from a text file using python

Question

I am trying to update an older script of mine for a class. Typically this script will just record a '1' if any of the items from a list appear in that line. However, now I want it to count and sum the number of times any of those unique words appear in that line. For example, using this list:

ess = ['jim','bob','sally','tom']
.
.
.   
elif 'SCHOOL' in line:
    csvfile.write( str(line.count(',') + 1)+ ',')
    flag = 0
    for staff in ess:
      if staff in line:
        csvfile.write('1')
        flag = 1
        break
    if flag == 1:
      csvfile.write('\n')
    else:
      csvfile.write('0\n')

Instead of simply recording a "1" if any of the names appear. I would like it return a sum of how many names appear in that line. For example, if both jim and sally appear in that line, return a "2"

Answer 1

You can simply run multiple count on the string/sentence.

or you can split the sentence by " " (space) delimiter and go over that returned list and check each word is equal to one of your desired words:

I would of do something like that:

 sum = 0
 for line in lines:
     split_list = line.split(" ")
     for word in ess:
         if word in split_list :
             sum+=1

or alternative: sum = 0 for line in lines: for word in ess: sum += line.count(word)

Answer 2

There are two ways to attempt this:

1) You do not care how many times a name appears in the sentence as long as the name appears at least once:

def names_in_sentence(sentence_str):
    return sum([1 for name in lis_names if name in sentence_str])

This is a fairly pythonic way of doing it. I am using list comprehension to create a list of 1's for each name that is there in the input sentence.

2) You do care about how many times a name appears in the sentence. ie if the sentence was "This is a bob, he's quite the bob', you would return 2:

def names_in_sentence(sentence_str):
    return sum([sentence.count(name) for name in lis_names])

In this case, I use list comprehension to count the number of times each name appears in the sentence, and sum the list.