List Index Error on Python

Question

Im writing a program to try to calculate how many times the most repeated word in a list occurs. I keep getting an error that says: index error. Even though when I print the list of my word_list, it shows there are 108 elements. Could someone point me in the right direction as to where my error is?

  length = len(word_list)
  num = 0
  print(length)

    while num <= length:

            ele = word_list[num]

            if ele in wordDict:
                    wordDict[ele] = wordDict[ele] +1
                    repeat = repeat + 1
                    if repeat > highestRepeat:
                            highestRepeat = repeat

            else:
                    wordDict[ele] = 1
                    repeat = 1

            num = num+1

Where do you define repeat? I think you should use you just if wordDict[ele] > highestRepeat — kame
– kame, Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 5:53

Akshat Mahajan · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-10 05:55:12Z

3

List indexing goes from 0 to length-1.

In your while loop, you've told the num to go from 0 to length. That's why you have an index error.

Simply change num <= length to num < length. That should fix your code for you.

As an aside, there are much better ways to do this particular task. A simple two liner:

from collections import Counter

print(Counter(word_list).most_common(1))

Counter will calculate the frequencies of each element in your list for you, and most_common(1) will return the element with the highest frequency in your list.

edited Apr 10, 2016 at 5:55

answered Apr 10, 2016 at 5:51

Akshat Mahajan

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tfv · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-10 05:57:35Z

1

Just to mention that there is a more compact solution to your problem:

word_list =['this' ,'is', 'a', 'test', 'is']

for word in set(word_list):
    print word, ": ", word_list.count(word)

answered Apr 10, 2016 at 5:57

tfv

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2 Comments

Akshat Mahajan Over a year ago

This will print all words and their counts, not the word with maximum count (as the OP asks).

tfv Over a year ago

Correct, Counter is a better solution, answers have crossed. Just wanted to point into the direction of avoiding loops by using a standard python approach.

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