How do i find out how many individual letters there are in a word in python?

Question

I'm using pyscripter to create a hangman game. I have managed to get everything to work except one thing. This is that once i have found the correct word the script needs to match this to the secret word. This would usually be easy but the way i have done it leaves gaps in the string. What i want to do is using the number of letters in the secret word; when i enter a letter it looks for that letter and adds how many times the letter appears in the secret word. i.e. the letter "P" in APPLE appears 2 times, therefore adding 2 to a separate string. if the word was "APPLE" the program would be looking for 5 correct letters. This way i can make an "if" statement and end the game once the numbers of correct letters guessed matches the length of the secret word. This is the program i am using : http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/1HZ38RzykuE/maxresdefault.jpg

Does this make sense, I've been pondering on it for a while so it may be jumbled. Thank you if your able to help.

This is the code i am using: (blanktotal is the length of the secret word)

         else:
            if letter in secretword:
                letterscorrect = letterscorrect + 1
                os.system("cls")
                if letter not in guessedletters:
                    os.system("cls")
                    for x in range(0, len(secretword)):
                        if letter == secretword[x]:
                            for x in range(len(secretword)):
                                if secretword[x] in letter:

                                    hiddenletter = hiddenletter[:x] + secretword[x] + hiddenletter[x+1:]
                    guessedletters.append(letter)

                else:
                    print("")
            else:
                print("")


        for letter in hiddenletter:
            print(letter, end=' ')
        print("")

if letterscorrect == blanktotal:
            os.system("cls")
            print("")
            print("congratulations you have won!!!!")
            print("You are now the master of HANGMAN!!!!!")
            print("")

Answer 1

You can use the count() method to count the number of occurrence of a letter.

secret = "Apple"
secret.count('p')

gives

2

Answer 2

I think you're just looking for the count method:

>>> s = 'APPLE'
>>> s.count('P')
2