BookBot

BookBot is my first Boot.dev project!

BookBot is a simple command-line tool that analyzes a text file (such as a book) and reports:

• Total number of words
• Frequency of each alphabetical character (sorted from most common to least)

The project consists of two main files:

• main.py — handles command-line input, reads the file, and displays results
• stats.py — contains helper functions for counting words and characters

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Features

• Counts total words in a text file
• Counts occurrences of every character (case-insensitive)
• Sorts characters by frequency in descending order
• Displays only alphabetical characters in the result

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Project Structure

bookbot/
│
├── main.py        # The main program that prints results
├── stats.py       # Helper functions (word count, char count, sorting)
└── README.md      # Project documentation

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Usage

Run the program from the terminal:

python3 main.py <path_to_text_file>

Example:

python3 main.py books/frankenstein.txt

If you do not provide exactly one argument, the program prints:

Usage: python3 main.py <path_to_book>

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How It Works

main.py

• Reads the file path from command-line arguments
• Loads the text
• Calls functions from stats.py
• Prints word count
• Prints character frequencies (only letters)

stats.py

Contains three main functions:

get_num_words(text)

Splits the text into words and returns how many exist.

count_characters(text)

Counts each character (converted to lowercase).

sort_characters(count)

Builds a list of { "char": x, "num": y } and sorts it by frequency.

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Example Output

============ BOOKBOT ============
Analyzing book found at books/sample.txt...
----------- Word Count ----------
Found 54231 total words
--------- Character Count -------
e: 42412
t: 30551
a: 27735
o: 27118
...
============= END ===============

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Requirements

• Python 3.x
• A plain text file to analyze