A dictionary’s `items()` method returns a view of its key–value pairs. Each item is a tuple containing a key and its associated value, making the method useful when you need both while iterating. section 7.2
Inspect key–value pairs
For `colors = {'red': 'rouge', 'blue': 'bleu'}`, `list(colors.items())` produces `[('red', 'rouge'), ('blue', 'bleu')]`. The `list` call converts the view for display; `items()` itself does not return a list. section 7.2
The view updates when the dictionary changes. If you need to sort the pairs, first make a list. To sort word counts by frequency rather than by word, use the value at index 1 of each tuple as the sort key. section 7.2 section 7.8.2
word_count = {}
with open("moby_01_clean.txt", "r") as infile:
for word in infile:
# use stip() method to remove any extra whitespace
word = word.strip()
# increase the count for current word
word_count.setdefault(word, 0) #1
word_count[word] += 1 #2
word_list = list(word_count.items()) #3
word_list.sort(key=lambda x: x[1]) #4
print("Most common words:")
for word in reversed(word_list[-5:]): #5
print(word)
print("\nLeast common words:")
for word in word_list[:5]:
print(word)
A word-counting example converts `items()` to a list, sorts by each tuple’s count, then selects the five most and least frequent words. section 7.8.2
