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.

Answer 2

Counter(contents.split())

should use words instead ...

Answer 3

contents is a string, and strings in Python are iterable (i.e. strings behave like lists of letters in this context) so your Counter is counting letters.

You need to pass the Counter a list of words, not a string of letters.

Joran's answer shows how to do this using split().