CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Mika Tan
Mika Tan

Reputation: 128

Find the total amount of characters in a list

I'm kind of stuck on an Edabit Challenge (Link: https://edabit.com/challenge/S9KCN5kqoDbhNdKh5 ), and the objective is to basically find the total amount of characters in a list (all of the values are strings) and return that value.

Some examples are provided:

count_characters([
  "###",
  "###",
  "###"
]) ➞ 9

count_characters([
  "22222222",
  "22222222",
]) ➞ 16

count_characters([
  "------------------"
]) ➞ 18

count_characters([]) ➞ 0

count_characters(["", ""]) ➞ 0

My current code to achieve the goal is:

def count_characters(lst):
    print(lst) #I print the list
    count = 0 #Setting my count var to 0
    for item in lst: #Using a for loop to iterate through the list's values
        count += len(lst) #Getting the length of each value and adding it to the variable 'count'
        print(len(lst)) #I also print the length of each value
    print(count) #Outside the for loop, I print the count variable
    return count #Then I return it

(There are multiple tests to check if the entire function works btw)

When I ran the code, this is what the console outputs:

['###', '###', '###']
3
3
3
9
Test Passed
['22222222', '22222222']
2
2
4
FAILED: 4 should equal 16
ERROR: Traceback:
   in <module>
  File "./frameworks/python/cw-2.py", line 28, in assert_equals
    expect(actual == expected, message, allow_raise)
  File "./frameworks/python/cw-2.py", line 18, in expect
    raise AssertException(message)
cw-2.AssertException: 4 should equal 16

I don't understand why the code did not find the length of the 2nd test, but worked for the 1st test.

Thank you

Upvotes: 0

Views: 73

Answers (1)

Mehul Gupta
Mehul Gupta

Reputation: 1939

A very minor mistake...in the loop

for item in lst:
        count+=len(item)

You are doing

 for item in lst:
        count+=len(lst)

As in the 1st case, both length of list & length of each element is 3, the code gave the desired output but not for the 2nd case

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions