def sentence_stats(sentence):
    """
    Prints out various statistics about the input sentence
    """
    words = sentence.split()
    print_stats(words)
    
def print_stats(words):
    """
    Print out various statistics about the input list of words/strings
    """
    print "Number of words: " + str(len(words))
    print "Longest word: " + longest_word(words)
    print "Shortest word: " + shortest_word(words)
    print "Avg. word length: " + str(average_word_length(words))

# NOTE: if you want to try the example I did in class out
# you'll need to download the file of English words from:
# http://www.cs.middlebury.edu/~dkauchak/classes/cs150/examples/english.txt
# 
def file_stats(filename):
    """
    Prints out various statistics about the words in the
    file.  File is assumed to be one word per line
    """
    words = read_words(filename)
    print_stats(words)

def read_words(filename):
    word_file = open(filename, "r")
    words = []
    
    for line in word_file:
        # assuming one word per line
        words.append(line.strip())    
    
    word_file.close()
    return words
    
def average_word_length(words):
    """Given a list of strings, get the average length of the strings in the list"""
    length_sum = 0
    
    for word in words:
        length_sum += len(word)
    
    return float(length_sum)/len(words)
        
def longest_word(words):
    """Given a list of strings, get the longest string/word in the list"""
    longest = ""
    
    for word in words:
        if len(word) > len(longest):
            longest = word
    
    return longest

def shortest_word(words):
    """Given a list of strings, get the shortest string/word in the list"""
    
    shortest = words[0]
    
    for word in words:
        if len(word) <  len(shortest):
            shortest = word
      
    return shortest