Creating Dictionary of first letter from list of words from txt file

Question

I have a txt file with a list of words. I want to take those words and create a dictionary with using the first letter as the key and then appending the words that start with that letter. This is what I have so far...

file = open('words.txt').read()
print(file)

the result of the file: ["aback","abaft","abandoned","abashed","aberrant","abhorrent","abiding","abject","ablaze","able","abnormal","aboard","aboriginal","abortive","abounding","abrasive","abrupt","absent","absorbed","absorbing","abstracted","absurd","abundant","abusive","acceptable","accessible", ....]

alphaDict = {}

for word in file:
    if word[0] not in alphaDict.keys():
        alphaDict[word[0]] = []
        alphaDict[word[0]].append(word)
    else:
        alphaDict[word[0]].append(word)

for k,v in alphaDict.items():
    print(k , ":", v)

What am I missing? This is the result I get. [ : ['['] " : ['"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"', '"',

Answer 1

Your file looks like a json file containing the list of words. You should to json.load() to deserialize it into a python list before iterating for word in file:

import json
with open("words.txt") as f:
    words = json.load(f)

I renamed file to words, because your variable names should indicate what they are

Also, you don't need the else:, because you want to append to the list regardless of whether it existed before this iteration or you created it in this iteration:

alphaDict = {}

for word in file:
    if word[0] not in alphaDict: # In py3, don't need to do .keys()
        alphaDict[word[0]] = []
        
    alphaDict[word[0]].append(word)