count() to get number of matching items

my_list=['a','b','c','b','a','d']
print("Number of times a appears : ", my_list.count('a'))
print("Number of times b appears : ", my_list.count('b'))
print("Number of times c appears : ", my_list.count('c'))

Number of times a appears :  2
Number of times b appears :  2
Number of times c appears :  1

Example: Counting Items That Don’t Exist

my_list = ['x', 'y', 'z']
print("Count of 'a':", my_list.count('a'))  # should print 0, because 'a' is not in list

• This shows that `count()` returns 0 for missing elements, not an error.

Example: Custom Objects with __eq__

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
    def __eq__(self, other):
        return isinstance(other, Person) and self.name == other.name

p1 = Person("Alice")
p2 = Person("Bob")
p3 = Person("Alice")
lst = [p1, p2, p3]

print("Count of Person('Alice'):", lst.count(Person("Alice")))  # 2

• Demonstrates how equality definition in a class affects counting.

Example: Count Multiple Targets Efficiently

from collections import Counter

my_list = ['a', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'a', 'd', 'b']
cnt = Counter(my_list)
print("Count of 'a':", cnt['a'])
print("Count of 'b':", cnt['b'])
print("Top two frequent items:", cnt.most_common(2))

• Using `collections.Counter` avoids scanning list multiple times for different items.

Example: Real‑World Use Case (Text Processing)

text = "apple orange apple banana apple fruit"
words = text.split()
print("Number of 'apple':", words.count('apple'))

• Useful for simple word frequency in small texts, e.g. for surveys or parsing logs.

Subhendu Mohapatra

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