def get_word_frequencies(filename):
    freqs = {}
    for line in open(filename):
        for char in line.split():
            if char in freqs:
                freqs[char] += 1
            else:
                freqs[char] = 1
  return freqs

from collections import Counter
from string import ascii_letters

def get_word_frequencies(filename):
    with open(filename) as f:
        c = Counter(f.read())
    return {k:v for k,v in c.items() if k in ascii_letters}

c = get_word_frequencies('derp.py')

print(c)
# {'o': 12, 'h': 1, 'C': 2, 't': 16, 'i': 18, 'y': 1, 'u': 5, 'f': 11, 'p': 6,
# 'v': 2, 'c': 10, 'm': 7, 'n': 13, 'k': 3, 'd': 5, 'a': 6, 'q': 2, 'w': 3,
# 's': 10, 'g': 3, 'r': 19, 'l': 6, 'e': 25}

for char in line:

for word in line.split():
    for char in word:

>>> import collections
>>> print collections.Counter("hello how are you doing today?")
Counter({' ': 5, 'o': 5, 'a': 2, 'e': 2, 'd': 2, 'h': 2, 'l': 2, 'y': 2, 'g': 1, 'i': 1, 'n': 1, 'r': 1, 'u': 1, 't': 1, 'w': 1, '?': 1})

import re
from collections import Counter

with open('filename', 'r') as file:
    text = file.read()

text = re.sub('[s]+|()', ' ', text).split()

freqs = Counter(text)