How to check if a word can be created from the letters in a list?

Question

I'm trying to do something like scrabble solver.

letters = ['s','w','r','a']
line_of_dic= ['s','w','r','a','a']


# printing original lists
print("Original list : " + str(line_of_dic))
print("Original sub list : " + str(letters))

# using all() to
# check subset of list
flag = 0
if (all(x in line_of_dic for x in letters)):
    flag = 1

# printing result
if (flag):
    print("Yes, the word can be created")
else:
    print("No, the word cant be.")

This is the part of code that I'm unable to repair, word can't be created, but it prints yes. Is it possible to check if all the letters are in line_of_dic, but if elements are doubled or tripled to check this? Also, is it possible to do without fancy libraries?

What do you mean by **but if elements are doubled or tripled to check this** ? — Maurice Meyer, Sep 29 '20 at 18:22
`without fancy libraries` - can you use built-in python modules? — wwii, Sep 29 '20 at 18:24
I mean that in this example the word in line of dic cant be created from the letters above, but the output here is that it can be. — seur30, Sep 29 '20 at 18:24
@MauriceMeyer OP wants to only return Yes if the same count of each character from `line_of_dic` is present in `letters`. They want to be able to build the contents of `line_of_dic` from `letters`. — Random Davis, Sep 29 '20 at 18:24
@RandomDavis Yes, I created script that read values and changes them into a list with chars from the txt file that contains dictonary. My point is to be able to check if word can be created from letters or not — seur30, Sep 29 '20 at 18:26
Should we use all of the letters in the reference list, or can we skip some? — Karl Knechtel, Aug 01 '22 at 19:55

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 29 '20 at 18:29

You can use dictionary structure. To create dictionary from list you can write a simple code:

letterDict = {}
lineDict = {}

for item in letters:
    if item not in letterDict:
        letterDict[item] = 1
    else:
        letterDict[item] += 1
        
for item in line_of_dic:
    if item not in lineDict:
        lineDict[item] = 1
    else:
        lineDict[item] += 1

After that point, you can simply compare two dictionary:

if letterDict == lineDict:
    print("Yes, the word can be created")
else:
    print("No, the word cant be.")

wwii · Answer 2 · 2020-09-29T18:43:15.243

You need to count the number of each character in each word and then compare the values. You can do this with a dictionary.

ltrs = {}
lod = {}

for char in letters:
    ltrs[char] = ltrs.get(char,0) + 1

for char in line_of_dic:
    lod[char] = lod.get(char,0) + 1

Then you can see if there are enough of each character to make the word.

In [3]: ltrs
Out[3]: {'a': 1, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 'w': 1}

In [4]: lod
Out[4]: {'a': 2, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 'w': 1}

collections.Counter can make those dictionaries for you.

import collections
ltrs = collections.Counter(letters)
lod = collections.Counter(line_of_dic)

In [6]: ltrs
Out[6]: Counter({'a': 1, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 'w': 1})

In [7]: lod
Out[7]: Counter({'a': 2, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 'w': 1})

Subtracting the Counters you can see if there are enough.

In [31]: lod-ltrs
Out[31]: Counter({'a': 1})

lod has one more 'a' than ltrs.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 29 '20 at 18:36

0

This can be done on one line by comparing the count of each letter:

flag = 0
if all(line_of_dic.count(char) == letters.count(char) for char in line_of_dic):
    flag = 1

Rather than checking if the letter is present, this checks if the count matches.

answered Sep 29 '20 at 18:36

Random Davis

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Wonderful solution, Thank you for help – seur30 Sep 29 '20 at 18:38

How to check if a word can be created from the letters in a list?

3 Answers3