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

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.

• Hello, you'll need to explain in your post how you map a letter to its numerical value, because there are a gazillion ways to do this :) – IEatBagels Nov 29 '19 at 19:52

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