Group words with the same set of characters in Python

By Devansh Sharma

Grouping words with the same set of characters in Python is also known as Group Anagrams, Given a list of words with the same set of characters with different positions in word like, ‘hoop’ and ‘pooh’ and we have to group them together in a list.

Problem Statement: Grouping words with the same set of characters.

Input:

 list= ['hello' ,'oellh' ,'lleho' , 'how' ,'woh','ohw' ,'hoop' ,'pooh' ,'ooph']

Output:

[['hello', 'oellh', 'lleho'], ['how', 'woh', 'ohw'], ['hoop', 'pooh', 'ooph']]

“Please refer to the following links if any concept is not explored by you!”

pre-requisite:

1.Collections Module in Python

2.All types of loops in Python with examples
3.List and Dictionary Manipulation in Python

4. String split and join in Python

#importing defaultdict method from the collections module
from collections import defaultdict

input_list = ['hello' ,'oellh' ,'lleho' , 'how' ,'woh','ohw' ,'hoop' ,'pooh' ,'ooph']
#when list object is passed to defaultdict then values of dictionary is list
group = defaultdict(list)


#looping over each word in list
for word in input_list: 
  group[str(sorted(word))].append(word)

#getting similar pairs
pairs = list(group.values())


#printing the results
print(pairs)

Output:

[['hello', 'oellh', 'lleho'], ['how', 'woh', 'ohw'], ['hoop', 'pooh', 'ooph']]

Explanation:

• use of defaultdict method is to create a dictionary corresponding to key having characters of words.
• use of list argument is to create key-value list pairs.
• str method on sorted(word) creates a list of keys having alphabets of words.
• append(word) pairs similar words.

Python docs:
Data structure