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Saint Louis University

Computer Science 1300
Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming

Michael Goldwasser

Spring 2020

Computer Science Department

Homework Assignment 16


Please make sure you adhere to the policies on academic integrity.


  1. (5 points)

    Assume that the method dict.items() did not exist. Give a small code fragment that produces a list of (key,value) pairs for a dictionary named data.

  2. (5 points)

    Although not discussed in the chapter, Python dictonaries also support a method named setdefault, documented as follows:

    	setdefault(key, default)
    	  if key is in the dicitonary, return its value. If
    	  not, insert key with a value of default and
    	  return default.

    Demonstrate your understanding by giving a snippet of code with logic that is equivalent to the following:

    val = capital.setdefault('CA','Springfield')
    

    presuming that capital is an existing dictionary. You are not allowed to use the setdefault method in your answer.

  3. (10 points)

    Write a function with signature letterFrequency(word) that returns a dictionary that maps each occurrying letter of the string word to a count of the number of times that letter occurs. For example, letterFrequency('Mississippi') should return a dictionary with entries {'M':1, 'i':4, 's':4, 'p':2}

    With proper use of dictionaries, your function should require only a single loop through the characters of the string, updating the frequency counts as you proceed. You should avoid use of the str.count method (which itself would depend on a loop).


Michael Goldwasser
CSCI 1300, Spring 2020
Last modified: Monday, 30 December 2019
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