Python Program to Count the Occurrences of a Word in a Text File

This Python program counts the occurrences of a specified word in a text file

Problem Statement

You are tasked with creating a Python program that reads the content of a given text file and counts the occurrences of a specific target word. Your program should provide the user with a way to input the target word, and it should then display the count of how many times that word appears in the text file, regardless of its capitalization.

Python Program to Count the Occurrences of a Word in a Text File

def count_word_occurrences(file_path, target_word):
    try:
        with open(file_path, 'r') as file:
            content = file.read()
            word_count = content.lower().count(target_word.lower())
            return word_count
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print("File not found.")
        return 0

file_path = 'path/to/your/text/file.txt'  # Update this with the actual file path
target_word = input("Enter the word to count: ")

occurrences = count_word_occurrences(file_path, target_word)
print(f"The word '{target_word}' appears {occurrences} times in the file.")

How it Works

1. Defining the Function count_word_occurrences

This function takes two parameters: file_path (the path to the text file) and target_word (the word to be counted). Inside the function:

• The try block attempts to open the specified file in read mode using a with statement. This is a context manager that ensures the file is properly closed after its suite finishes executing.
• If the file is successfully opened, its content is read using the read() method, and the lowercase version of the content is stored in the content variable.
• The count() method is used to count the occurrences of the lowercase target_word within the lowercase content.
• The function returns the count of occurrences.

If a FileNotFoundError occurs (i.e., the specified file doesn’t exist), the except block prints an error message and returns 0.

2. Getting User Input and Counting Occurrences

• The file_path variable is set to the path of the text file you want to process. Replace 'path/to/your/text/file.txt' with the actual path.
• The target_word variable is assigned the word entered by the user using the input() function.
• The count_word_occurrences function is called with the file_path and target_word as arguments, and the result is stored in the occurrences variable.
• Finally, the program prints the result, showing how many times the target_word appears in the file.

3. Case Insensitivity

Both the content of the file and the target word are converted to lowercase using the lower() method. This ensures that the search is case-insensitive. For example, if the target word is “Python” and the file contains “python” or “PYTHON,” they will all be counted as occurrences.

Input/ Output