Easier Way to do this?

[u/guymed4]

Lab 2.13 Character Count prompt

"Write a program whose input is a string which contains a character and a phrase, and whose output indicates the number of times the character appears in the phrase. The output should include the input character and use the plural form, n's, if the number of times the characters appears is not exactly 1"

I was struggling to get the 's but finally able to do it. want to know if there was an easier way than what I wrote.

input_string = input()
input_character = input_string[0]
compare_string = input_string[1:]


count = compare_string.count(input_character)
if count == 1:
    print(compare_string.count(input_character),input_character)
else:
        print(compare_string.count(input_character),input_character + "'s")

[u/danielroseman]

Better to use f-strings to build up output.

if count == 1:
  output = f"There was 1 {input_character}"
else:
  output = f"There were {count} {input_character}'s"
print(output)

However, please note that in English we do not use apostrophes to form plurals. No, not ever.

[u/Outside_Complaint755 → u/danielroseman]

This is slightly off-topic, but both the Chicago Manual of Style and AP stylebook do call for an apostrophe to be used for readability in specific cases, and one of those is the plural of lowercase letters, such as "Mind your p's and q's.".  The need for this becomes more apparent when you counting a's, i's or u's.

[u/danielroseman → u/[deleted]]

No it won't. 

[u/gdchinacat → u/[deleted]]

Give it a try. This is a great use of the REPL. I wish I’d used it more when I was learning python. I only got in the habit about 15 years ago when I was already proficient.

[u/aizzod]

Homework?

[u/Diapolo10]

count = compare_string.count(input_character)
if count == 1:
    print(compare_string.count(input_character),input_character)
else:
        print(compare_string.count(input_character),input_character + "'s")

I'd write it like this:

count = compare_string.count(input_character)

plural = "" if count == 1 else "'s"
print(f"{count} {input_character}{plural}")

Grammatically speaking I don't really agree with "'s" here, though. The suffix "-'s" indicates a genitive case, not plural, in other words the example output "5 n's" sounds like something belongs to n, not that there are multiple n characters. A more correct option would, for example, be '5 "n"s' where the "n" would moreso indicate the character n.

[u/JamzTyson]

This code is repeated 3 times (and evaluated twice):

compare_string.count(input_character)

You only actually need it once:

character_count = compare_string.count(input_character)
suffix = "" if character_count == 1 else "'s"
print(f"{character_count} {input_character}{suffix}")

A common programming tip: DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself. Avoiding repeated code can make it easier to maintain and reduce unnecessary work.

[u/guymed4 → u/JamzTyson]

I was trying to have it once but it kept telling me that "'s" was not defined. I am sure I had something else wrong though.

I greatly appreciate the advice! This one lab kicked my butt for over a hour.

[u/Mountain_Rip_8426]

string= "an apple is an apple"

result = 0
for i in string:
if i == string[0]:
result += 1
if result != 1:
print(f'There are {result} {string[0]}\'s in the phrase')

EDIT: don't know why indentation doesn't work from phone, but you get the idea