palin.py

from pprint import pprint

lens_to_test = range(2,26)
lengths = {}

def all_words():
    all_words = []
    words = '/usr/share/dict/words'
    f = open(words,'r')
    for w in f.readlines():
        word = w.strip()
        word = word.lower()
        all_words.append(word)

    return all_words

def palin_count_by_len(length, words):
    count = 0
    for w in words:
        if len(w) == length and (w == w[::-1]):
            count = count + 1

    lengths[length] = count

word_list = all_words()

for l in lens_to_test:
    palin_count_by_len(l, word_list)

pprint(lengths)