len() function in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Counting Items with the len() Function

📖 Scenario: You are organizing a small library. You want to know how many books you have on your shelf.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use the len() function to count the number of items in a list.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of book titles

Create a variable to store the count of books

Use the len() function to find the number of books

Print the number of books

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Counting items is useful in many daily tasks like inventory, lists, or checking how many things you have.

💼 Career

Knowing how to count items in data is a basic skill for programming jobs, data analysis, and software development.

1

Create a list of books

Create a list called books with these exact titles: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

Python

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create a list and separate items with commas.

2

Create a variable to hold the count

Create a variable called book_count and set it to 0 to prepare for counting.

Python

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird']
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just write book_count = 0 on a new line.

3

Use len() to count the books

Set book_count to the length of the books list using the len() function.

Python

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird']
book_count = 0
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use len(books) to get the number of items in the list.

4

Print the number of books

Print the value of book_count to show how many books are on the shelf.

Python

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird']
book_count = 0
book_count = len(books)
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(book_count) to display the number.