sherlock.py

import string
import urllib.request

# download the data from the internet
url = 'https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/plain-text/cano.txt'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
data = response.read()      # read the raw bytes
text = data.decode('utf-8') # turn the raw data into a Python string
words = text.split()

# Alternatively, open the file (if you have already downloaded it)
#f = open('sherlock.txt')
#words = f.read().split()
#f.close()

# dictionary where key is a word, value is the integer count
wordcount = {}
for word in words:
    word = word.lower()
    # does the first char contain punctuation?
    while len(word)>0 and word[0] in string.punctuation:
        word = word[1:]
    # does the last char contain punctuation?    
    while len(word) > 0 and word[-1] in string.punctuation:
        word = word[:-1]
    # add word to the counts dictionary   
    wordcount[word] = 1 + wordcount.get(word, 0)
    
# elementary should appear 7 or 8 times, according to google
print(wordcount['elementary'])