[Tutor] Python

[Mats Wichmann]

On 12/20/18 8:49 AM, Mary Sauerland wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I want to get rid of words that are less than three characters but I keep getting errors. I tried multiple ways but keep getting errors. 

Just a quick note or two:
> 
> Here is my code:
> 
> f1_name = "/Users/marysauerland/Documents/file1.txt"
> #the opinions
> f2_name = "/Users/marysauerland/Documents/file2.txt"
> #the constitution
> 
> 
> def read_words(words_file):
>     return [word.upper() for line in open(words_file, 'r') for word in line.split()]
> 
> 
> read_words(f1_name)

^^^ this line is meaningless.  "everything is an object" in Python. your
function returns a list object - which you don't do anything with. you
should assign a name to it, like:

constitution_words = read_words(f1_name)

Since no name is assigned to that object, Python sees it has no
references, and it is just lost.

and then...

> #performs the function on the file
> set1 = set(read_words(f1_name))
if you saved the object returned from the earlier call to the function,
then you don't need to call the function again, instead you convert the
saved list object to a set object.  We can't tell whether you have an
eventual use for the unfiltered list of words, or only the set of unique
words, the answer to that determines how you write this section.

picking a more descriptive name than set1 would be a good idea (and
f1_name as well, and others - when writing software, the hard part is
maintenance, where you or others have to go in later and fix or change
something.  using meaningful names really helps with that, so it's a
good habit to get into).

since you have sets consisting of words from your two documents, you may
as well use set operations to work with them.  Do you know the set
operation to find all of the members of one set that are also in another
set? hint: in set theory, that is called the intersection.

you say you are trying to remove short words, but there seems to be no
code to do that.  instead you seem to be solving a different problem?