Count the number of times a letter appears in a text file in Python

Count the number of times a letter appears in a text file in Python

To count the number of times a specific letter appears in a text file using Python, follow these steps:

  1. Open the text file in reading mode.
  2. Read the contents of the file.
  3. Use the count() method to count the occurrences of the specified letter.

Here's an example that counts the number of times the letter 'a' appears in a file named sample.txt:

# Define the letter to be searched for letter_to_search = 'a' # Open the file and count the occurrences with open('sample.txt', 'r') as file: content = file.read() count = content.lower().count(letter_to_search.lower()) print(f"The letter '{letter_to_search}' appears {count} times in the file.")

Note:

  • We're using the lower() method to make the search case-insensitive. If you want a case-sensitive search, just remove the lower() calls.
  • This code counts all occurrences of the letter, regardless of whether it appears as part of a word, standalone, or as part of punctuation (e.g., "a" in "can" or "a" in "a." are both counted). If you have more specific requirements, you'll need to adapt the code accordingly.

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