Objective
Develop a Python program to count the total number of words in a given text file. The program should read the file and compute the word count by splitting the contents based on spaces or punctuation.
Example Python Exercise
Show Python Code
# This program reads a text file and counts the total number of words in the file.
import string
def count_words_in_file(filename):
try:
# Open the file in read mode
with open(filename, 'r') as file:
# Read the content of the file
content = file.read()
# Remove punctuation from the content
content_without_punctuation = content.translate(str.maketrans('', '', string.punctuation))
# Split the content into words based on spaces
words = content_without_punctuation.split()
# Count the number of words
word_count = len(words)
print(f"The total number of words in the file '{filename}' is: {word_count}")
except FileNotFoundError:
print(f"The file '{filename}' does not exist.")
except Exception as e:
print(f"An error occurred: {e}")
# Example usage
input_file = "example.txt" # Replace with your input file name
count_words_in_file(input_file)
Output
If the example.txt file contains:
Hello, this is an example text file. It has several words.
The output will be:
The total number of words in the file 'example.txt' is: 8
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