duplicate_encode.py

# Description:
# The goal of this exercise is to convert a string to a new string where each character in the new string
# is "(" if that character appears only once in the original string, or ")" if that character appears more than
# once in the original string. Ignore capitalization when determining if a character is a duplicate.
# Examples:
# "din"      =>  "((("
# "recede"   =>  "()()()"
# "Success"  =>  ")())())"
# "(( @"     =>  "))(("

def duplicate_encode(word):
    # Empty string to return
    ret = ""
    # Modify word to be all same case to allow for case insensitive comparisons
    word = word.lower()

    # For loop to iterate through each character in word
    for char in word:
        # If conditional to determine the count of char in word
        if word.count(char) > 1:
            # If char found more than once in word, concatenate ")" to ret
            ret += ")"
        else:
            # If char found only once in word, concatenate "(" to ret
            ret += "("

    return ret