Word frequency analysis in Python returning letter frequency

Question

Following examples on other Stackoverflow posts related to word frequency analysis in Python, my program is returning letter frequency analysis and not actually the word.

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Answer 1

You can use a regex to find all the word (vs character by character that you are getting now):

import re

...

commonWords = Counter(m.group(1) for m in re.finditer(r'\b(\w+)\b', contents))

You can use contents.split() to split the text on whitespace but that will not separate words from punctuation. You will also have a separate count for word and word, and word. etc which using a regex will fix.