Assigning a numerical value to each alphabet in corresponding order and then summing any inputted word

Question

I made a function that outputs the sum of the value of each letter in a word. For example if I input hello my function would output 52.

def words_to_marks(s):
    import string
    values = {}             # dictionary to store value of each alphabet
    values_of_words = []    # to store final value of words
    for index, letters in enumerate(string.ascii_lowercase, 1):     # creates the dictionary
        values[letters] = index
    final = []              # stores value of each number before adding
    for letter in s:
        letter_lower = letter.lower
        final.append(values[letter])    # appends the value of each letter into the list
    values_of_words.append(sum(final))  # sums all the values in the list
    submit = str(values_of_words)       # converts into string so I can remove the brackets around the list
    return submit[1:-1]


test = words_to_marks("friends")       
print(test)

I would really appreciate it if someone could point me to the right direction for how I should condense or improve my code.

Answer 1

Honestly, the initial words_to_marks function is full of "anti-patterns/bad smells".

When reviewing in steps:

• instead of iterating over string.ascii_lowercase and generating/filling a dictionary of letter indices on each function call with:

  for index, letters in enumerate(string.ascii_lowercase, 1):     # creates the dictionary
      values[letters] = index
  

  create a predefined top-level dict lowercase_indices_map at once:

  import string
  
  lowercase_indices_map = {c:i for i, c in enumerate(string.ascii_lowercase, 1)}
  

• converting each letter of the word with:

  for letter in s:
     letter_lower = letter.lower
  

  is completely redundant as the whole word can be lowercased at once s = s.lower()

• and the "magic" like:

  values_of_words.append(sum(final))  # sums all the values in the list
  submit = str(values_of_words)       # converts into string so I can remove the brackets around the list
  return submit[1:-1]
  

  is just an unnecessary thing that you should avoid doing in future. The sum of letter indices is simply calculated with a single sum(...) call.

---

The whole idea fits in few lines of code:

import string

lowercase_indices_map = {c:i for i, c in enumerate(string.ascii_lowercase, 1)}

def sum_letters_indices(word):
    word = word.lower()
    return sum(lowercase_indices_map[char] for char in word)

Sample usage:

print(sum_letters_indices("hello"))    # 52
print(sum_letters_indices("friends"))  # 75