Design Hash Map for Counting | Dataford Interview Questions

Design a hash map to count how many times a word appears in a text file.

Implement count_words(text), where text is the file contents as a string. Treat words as alphabetic sequences that may contain an internal apostrophe, ignore punctuation, and count words case-insensitively. Return a dictionary mapping each normalized word to its frequency.

Constraints

0 <= len(text) <= 5000
Words contain English letters and may contain one internal apostrophe.
Matching is case-insensitive.
Return an empty dictionary when no words are present.

Function Signature

def count_words(text):

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Problem

Design a hash map to count how many times a word appears in a text file.

Constraints

0 <= len(text) <= 5000
Words contain English letters and may contain one internal apostrophe.
Matching is case-insensitive.
Return an empty dictionary when no words are present.

Function Signature

def count_words(text):

Your question is Design Hash Map for Counting. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.