Python- How to return a dictionary that counts occurrences in a list of strings? -

i'm trying make function counts occurrences of first letters of list of strings , returns them dictionary.

for example:

list=["banana","ball", "cat", "hat"]

dictionary like: {b:2, c:1, h:1}

here code have iterates doesn't count properly. that's i'm getting stuck. how update values count?

def count_starts(text):     new_list=[]     word in range(len(text)):         letter in text[word]:             if letter[0]=='':                 new_list.append(none)             else:                 new_list.append(letter[0])      new_dict= {x:new_list.count(x) x in new_list}       return new_dict 

also, how can avoid out of range error given following format:

def count_starts(text):     import collections     c=collections.counter(x[0] x in text)     return c 

also, need if list contains "none" value? need count none.

problem code seem iterate on letters of word. letter[0] substring of letter (which string).

you'd have more simply, no need double loop, take each first letter of words:

for word in text:     if word:  # filter out empty strings         first_letter = word[0] 

but once again collections.counter taking generator comprehension extract first letter best choice , one-liner (with added condition filter out empty strings):

import collections c = collections.counter(x[0] x in ["banana","ball", "cat", "", "hat"] if x) 

c dict: counter({'b': 2, 'h': 1, 'c': 1})

one variant insert none instead of filtering out empty values be:

c = collections.counter(x[0] if x else none x in ["banana","ball", "cat", "", "hat"])