Your helpful comments led me to the following solution:
class Word_Parser:
"""docstring for Word_Parser"""
def __init__(self, sentences):
self.sentences = sentences
def parser(self):
self.word_list = self.sentences.split()
word_list = []
word_list = self.word_list
return word_list
def sort_word_list(self):
self.sorted_word_list = sorted(self.sentences.split())
sorted_word_list = self.sorted_word_list
return sorted_word_list
def get_num_words(self):
self.num_words = len(self.word_list)
num_words = self.num_words
return num_words
test = Word_Parser("mary had a little lamb")
test.parser()
test.sort_word_list()
test.get_num_words()
print test.word_list
print test.sorted_word_list
print test.num_words
and returns: ['mary', 'had', 'a', 'little', 'lamb'] ['a', 'had', 'lamb', 'little', 'mary'] 5
Thank you all.