exercise #40 in A Tour of Go

Question

My quick searching did not reveal anyone sharing their solution to this exercise, so am not sure if there are other (and better) approaches to mine:

package main
import (
 "code.google.com/p/go-tour/wc"
 "strings"
)
func WordCount(s string) map[string]int {
 foo := strings.Fields(s)
 m := make(map[string]int)
 for i := 0; i < len(foo); i++ {
 v, ok := m[foo[i]]
 if ok {
 m[foo[i]] = v + 1
 }
 m[foo[i]] = v + 1
 }
 return m
}
func main() {
 wc.Test(WordCount)
}

Answer 1

You can be more concise and readable using range and the fact that the default value of the int is 0 :

func WordCount(s string) map[string]int {
 m := make(map[string]int)
 for _, w := range(strings.Fields(s)) {
 m[w]++
 }
 return m
}

Answer 2

Programmers spend almost all their time reading code; code should be documented. API users need good documentation too.

A meaningless name like foo is the first red flag; good names are an excellent form of code documentation.

Go has a documentation tool: Godoc: documenting Go code. "Documentation is a huge part of making software accessible and maintainable."

Here's my solution:

// A Tour of Go. Exercise 40: Maps.
package main
import (
 "code.google.com/p/go-tour/wc"
 "strings"
)
// WordCount returns a map of the counts of each "word" in the string s.
func WordCount(s string) map[string]int {
 counts := make(map[string]int)
 for _, word := range strings.Fields(s) {
 counts[word]++
 }
 return counts
}
func main() {
 wc.Test(WordCount)
}