Data structures

Question

Write a function called remove_duplicates which will take one argument called string.
This string input will only have characters between a-z.
The function should remove all repeated characters in the string and return a tuple
with two values:
A new string with only unique, sorted characters.
The total number of duplicates dropped.
For example:
remove_duplicates('aaabbbac') => ('abc', 5)
remove_duplicates('a') => ('a', 0)
remove_duplicates('thelexash') =>

Answer 1

def remove_duplicates(string):
list = {}
duplicates = 0
for char in string:
if char in list:
list[char] = list.get(char) + 1
duplicates = duplicates + 1
else:
list[char] = 0
print('(\'' + ''.join(list.keys()) + '\', ' + str(duplicates) + ')')