analyzer.py cant store string in my dictionary

Question

For some reason when i run the following python code I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/ubuntu/workspace/pset6/sentiments/analyzer.py", line 20, in init positives[h] = line.strip(' ') # store word and hash code in dictionary TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

What I want to do is store the line after it has been read in my dictionary along with its hashcode.

This is so I can access the word later on using the hashcode. A hash table essentially.

The problem seems to be here:

positives[h] = line.strip(' ')

I have no idea why that would not work.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

import nltk

class Analyzer():
    """Implements sentiment analysis."""

    # create two new dictionaries to store positive and negative words in memory
    positives = {}
    negatives = {}

    def __init__(self, positives, negatives):
        """Initialize Analyzer."""

        # open positive-words.txt and read line by line, hashing each line and storing the hash and word in the appropriate dictionary
        with open(positives, "r") as lines:
            for line in lines:
                if line.startswith(';'): # ignore comments at top of text file
                    continue
                else:
                    h = hash(line.strip(' ')) # hash word using built in python hash function, removing any spaces
                    positives[h] = line.strip(' ') # store word and hash code in dictionary

        # open negative-words.txt and read line by line, hashing each line and storing the hash and word in the appropriate dictionary
        with open(negatives, "r") as lines:
            for line in lines:
                if line.startswith(';'):
                    continue
                else:
                    h = hash(line.strip(' '))
                    negatives[h] = line.strip(' ')

    def analyze(self, text):
        """Analyze text for sentiment, returning its score."""

        score = 0

        for word in text.split():
            h = hash(word.strip(' '))

            if positives[h] == word.strip(' '):
                score += 1

            elif negatives[h] == word.strip(' '):
                score -= 1

            else:
                continue

        return score

Answer 1

I have not checked your code, it is possible that the only error is the path in open, which must be "positive-words.txt", if that is how it appears in your IDE.

Since we are in class Analyzer (), in my opinion the correct way to store positives and negatives would be in a set() in the following way:

class Analyzer():
    """Implements sentiment analysis."""

    def __init__(self, positives, negatives):
        """Initialize Analyzer."""
        # TODO
        self.positives = set()
        file = open("positive-words.txt", "r")

then we can do:

for line in file:
    ......
file.close()

this last is just another option to what you do.