Python - Count number of words in a list strings

Question

Im trying to find the number of whole words in a list of strings, heres the list

mylist = ["Mahon Point retail park", "Finglas","Blackpool Mahon", "mahon point  blanchardstown"] 

expected outcome:

4
1
2
3

There are 4 words in mylist[0], 1 in mylist[1] and so on

for x, word in enumerate(mylist):
    for i, subwords in enumerate(word):
        print i

Totally doesnt work....

What do you guys think?

Answer 1

Use str.split:

>>> mylist = ["Mahon Point retail park", "Finglas","Blackpool Mahon", "mahon point  blanchardstown"] 
>>> for item in mylist:
...     print len(item.split())
...     
4
1
2
3

Answer 2

The simplest way should be

num_words = [len(sentence.split()) for sentence in mylist]

Answer 3

You can use NLTK:

import nltk
mylist = ["Mahon Point retail park", "Finglas","Blackpool Mahon", "mahon point  blanchardstown"]
print(map(len, map(nltk.word_tokenize, mylist)))

Output:

[4, 1, 2, 3]