Character occurence

[Tops]

I have a python assignment that has to do with character occurrence. I have to extract all the characters (letters to be precise) in a poem and count how many of each letters there are.
For an example:

Bobby goes to school blahhhh blahhh blahhh

To:

B---6
o---5
y---1 ...etc

I have to write a code using a txt document and use the cat function to run my code and the poem. But i can only use dictionary to write this code. My code is below but it does not counts the number of each letters in the poem, it only counts the lines. I've been battling with it forever but no luck.

dict = {}
print "Frequency list:"
while True:
    char = raw_input() 
    if char == 'END': 
        break
    if char.isalpha():
            if char in dict:
                        dict[char] = dict[char] + 1
    else:
                    dict[char] = 1
for char, count in dict.items():
    print char  ,'\t', count
totalchars = 0
for char, count in dict.items():
    totalchars += count
print totalchars, "characters total"



so I asked my teacher and he says that if I under stand the two codes below, I would be able to fix the problem in my code. I understand it but :/ ...still no luck.

dict = {}
while True:
    word = raw_input()
    if word == '-1':
        break
    if word in dict:
        dict[word] = dict[word] + 1
    else:
        dict[word] = 1
for word, count in dict.items():
    print word,'\t', count
print 'Number of unique words:', len(dict)
totalWords = 0
for word, count in dict.items():
    totalWords += count
print 'Total number of words:', totalWords


myList = []
while True:
    line = raw_input()
    if line == '-1':
        break
    for char in line:
        if char.isalpha():
            myList.append(char)
    myList.append('\n')
for char in myList:
    print char,

[bvdet]

I assume variable char is a series of words. Iterate on chars as in:

for letter in char:
    if letter.isalpha():
        if letter in dict:
            dict[letter] = dict[letter] + 1
        else:
            dict[letter] = 1

BTW, please use code tags next time.

[Tops]

Ok.... that was helpful thanks
so my new code is:

dict = {}
print "Frequency list:"
while True:
	poem = raw_input() 
	if poem == 'END': 
		break
	for letter in poem:
		if letter.isalpha():
			if letter in dict:
				dict[letter] = dict[letter] + 1
			else:
            			dict[letter] = 1

but it gives me an EOF error...it says:

Frequency list:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "assignment.txt", line 4, in ?
poem = raw_input()
EOFError: EOF when reading a line

I assume variable char is a series of words. Iterate on chars as in:

for letter in char:
    if letter.isalpha():
        if letter in dict:
            dict[letter] = dict[letter] + 1
        else:
            dict[letter] = 1

BTW, please use code tags next time.

[bvdet]

Catch the EOFError with a try/except block.

dict = {}
print "Frequency list:"
while True:
    try:
        poem = raw_input()
    except EOFError, e:
        print "Reached the end of the file"
    if poem == 'END': 
        break
    for letter in poem:
        if letter.isalpha():
            if letter in dict:
                dict[letter] = dict[letter] + 1
            else:
                dict[letter] = 1

Why not read the file directly as in:

for letter in open(file_name).read():