TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'dict' and 'int'

Question

I just began studying Python and I am currently trying to count the frequency of character sequences in a segmentation (segment into words). I have a problem with my count_seq function. In this function I want in the first loop to go fetch each segment of the segmentation (in_object) and then in the second loop I am counting the sequences. From what I tried to change and understand I think the problem definitely lies in the for idx in range loop. The problem is this, when I try to run the script I have this TypeError : " TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'dict' and 'int'" which I do not understand.

def main():
    seq_length = 3
    freq_dict = count_seq(in_object, seq_length)
    print_freq(freq_dict)


def count_seq(segmentation, seq_length):
    freq_dict = dict()


    for idx in range(len(segmentation)):
        freq_dict[idx] = dict()
        segments = segmentation[idx].get_content()

    for pos in range(len(segments)):
        char = segments[pos:pos+seq_length]
        if len(char) < seq_length:
            continue
        freq_dict[char] = freq_dict.get(char, 0)+1
    return freq_dict


def print_freq(freq_dict):
    """Recuperer le contenu de la fonction de l'exercice 2..."""
    for key in sorted(freq_dict, key=freq_dict.get, reverse=True):
        print("%s:%s" %(key, freq_dict[key]))




if __name__ == "builtins":
    if in_objects:
        main()

Answer 1

This error is happening when you call sorted. The way items are sorted is by comparing them against each other. Some of the values of your freq_dict are dicts, and some of them are ints, which cannot be compared against each other (which is less: 7 or a dictionary? It doesn't make sense).

If you want to sort in this way, you need to make sure all values in freq_dict are comparable types.

In this block you set a bunch of keys to an empty dict:

for idx in range(len(segmentation)):
    freq_dict[idx] = dict()

Then in your next loop, you set another set of keys to ints.

What is your goal for freq_dict to be at the end?