Counting Character with Python

Simple Python coding tutorial for beginners

In our last article, we challenged ourselves to improve our word counter program by adding a character count feature. If you missed the last post, you can find it here:

Counting Words with Python

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Solution

We introduce the count_characters function, dedicated to counting characters in a file:

def count_characters(file_path: str) -> int:
    """Count characters in a file.

    :param file_path: The path to the file to count characters for.
    :return: The number of characters in the file.
    """
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        contents = file.read()
        return len(contents)

This function opens the file, reads its contents, and returns the total character count.

Full Code

We’ve integrated this new function into our existing word counter script:

"""Text analysis."""
import argparse


def count_words(file_path: str) -> int:
    """Count words in a file.

    :param file_path: The path to the file to count words for.
    :return: The number of words in the file.
    """
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        contents = file.read()
        words = contents.split()
        return len(words)


def count_characters(file_path: str) -> int:
    """Count characters in a file.

    :param file_path: The path to the file to count characters for.
    :return: The number of characters in the file.
    """
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        contents = file.read()
        return len(contents)


def main(file_path: str) -> None:
    """Word and character counter main function.

    :param file_path: The path to the file to count words and characters for.
    """
    word_count = count_words(file_path)
    character_count = count_characters(file_path)
    print(f"The file contains {word_count} words and {character_count} characters.")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Word and Character Counter")
    parser.add_argument("file_path", type=str, help="Path to the text file")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    main(args.file_path)

This improved script now outputs both word and character counts, providing a more comprehensive text file analysis.

Testing the Program

To test the updated script, run the following command:

$ python easy/text_analysis.py example.txt 
The file contains 4 words and 18 characters

Further Reading

If you want to learn more about programming and, specifically, Python and Java, see the following course:

Introduction to Programming with Python and Java

Note: If you use my links to order, I’ll get a small kickback. So, if you’re inclined to order anything, feel free to click above.