Python Program to Analyze Email Distribution by Hour (mbox-short.txt Solution)

✅ Python Program to Find Email Distribution by Hour (mbox-short.txt)

10.2 Write a program to read through the mbox-short.txt and figure out the distribution by hour of the day for each of the messages. You can pull the hour out from the 'From ' line by finding the time and then splitting the string a second time using a colon. From stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za Sat Jan  5 09:14:16 2008 Once you have accumulated the counts for each hour, print out the counts, sorted by hour as shown below.

Python example showing how to analyze email timestamps and calculate hourly distribution using dictionaries.

📘 Problem Statement

Write a Python program to read through the mbox-short.txt file and determine the distribution of emails by hour of the day.

Each email message contains a line starting with From that includes a timestamp like:

From stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za Sat Jan 5 09:14:16 2008

Your task is to:

• Extract the hour from the time (09:14:16)
• Count how many emails were sent during each hour
• Display results sorted by hour

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🧠 Logic Behind the Program

1. Open the mailbox file.
2. Read each line.
3. Select only lines starting with "From " (with space).
4. Extract the time field.
5. Split the time using : to get the hour.
6. Store counts using a dictionary.
7. Sort and print results.

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💻 Optimized Python Program

name = input("Enter file: ")
if len(name) < 1:
    name = "mbox-short.txt"

handle = open(name)

counts = {}

for line in handle:
    if line.startswith("From "):
        words = line.split()
        time = words[5]
        hour = time.split(":")[0]
        counts[hour] = counts.get(hour, 0) + 1

# Sort by hour
result = sorted(counts.items())

for hour, count in result:
    print(hour, count)

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📊 Example Output

04 3
06 1
07 1
09 2
10 3
11 6
14 1
15 2
16 4
17 2
18 1
19 1

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🔍 Code Explanation

✔ Dictionary Counting

counts.get(hour, 0) + 1

• If hour exists → increase count
• If not → start from 0

✔ Extracting Hour

time.split(":")[0]

Converts:

09:14:16 → 09

✔ Sorting Output

sorted(counts.items())

Sorts results by hour automatically.

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⚠️ Common Mistakes (Avoid These)

❌ Using From: instead of From
❌ Forgetting space after From
❌ Naming variable list (overwrites Python built-in function)