import pprint f = open('/u1/junk/shakespeare.txt', 'r') contents = f.read() f.close() count = {} # One way #for character in contents: #count.setdefault(character, 0) #count[character] = count[character] + 1 # The get method for a dictionary accepts two parameters # The first is the lookup value # The second is the default value if there is no record for character in contents: count[character] = count.get(character, 0) + 1 pprint.pprint(count)