Newbie with sort text file question

[Max M]

stuartc wrote:

> Hi:
> 
> I'm not a total newbie, but I'm pretty green.  I need to sort a text
> file and then get a total for the number of occurances for a part of
> the string. Hopefully, this will explain it better:
> 
> Here's the text file: 
> 
> banana_c \\yellow
> apple_a \\green
> orange_b \\yellow
> banana_d \\green
> orange_a \\orange
> apple_w \\yellow
> banana_e \\green
> orange_x \\yellow
> orange_y \\orange
> 
> I would like two output files:
> 
> 1) Sorted like this, by the fruit name (the name before the dash)
> 2) Then summarized like this, ordered with the highest occurances
> first:
> 
> orange occurs 4
> banana occurs 3
> apple occurs 2
> 
> Total occurances is 9


fruity = """banana_c \\yellow
apple_a \\green
orange_b \\yellow
banana_d \\green
orange_a \\orange
apple_w \\yellow
banana_e \\green
orange_x \\yellow
orange_y \\orange"""

# print sorted list
fruits = fruity.split('\n')
fruits.sort()
print '\n'.join(fruits)
print ''

# count occurences
counter = {}
for fruit in fruits:
     sort_of, apendix = fruit.split('_')
     counter[sort_of] = counter.get(sort_of, 0) + 1

# sort by occurences
decorated = [(counter[key], key) for key in counter.keys()]
decorated.sort()
decorated.reverse()

# print result
sum = 0
for count, sort_of in decorated:
     print sort_of, 'occurs', count
     sum += count

print ''
print 'Total occurances is', sum


regards Max M