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)