How to count the number of letters in a string without the spaces?

Question

This is my solution resulting in an error. Returns 0

PS: I\'d still love a fix to my code :)

from collections import Counter
import          


        

Answer 1

MattBryant's answer is a good one, but if you want to exclude more types of letters than just spaces, it will get clunky. Here's a variation on your current code using Counter that will work:

from collections import Counter
import string

def count_letters(word, valid_letters=string.ascii_letters):
    count = Counter(word) # this counts all the letters, including invalid ones
    return sum(count[letter] for letter in valid_letters) # add up valid letters

Example output:

>>> count_letters("The grey old fox is an idiot.") # the period will be ignored
22