Python List count() method
The count() method is used to find the number of times a specific element occurs in a list. It is very useful in scenarios where we need to perform frequency analysis on the data.
Let’s look at a basic example of the count() method.
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a = [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4]
c = a.count(1)
print(c)
[/GFGTABS]
3
Explanation: a.count(1) counts the occurrences of 1 in the list, as it is occurring 3 times in the list so the output is 3.
Syntax
list_name.count(value)
Prameters:
- list_name: The list object where we want to count an element.
- value: The element whose occurrences need to be counted.
Return Type: it an integer value, which represents the number of times the specified element appears in the list.
Examples of count() method
Example 1: Lits Containing Different Datatypes
The count() method also works well with list that have different types of data.
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a = [1, 'GfG', 3.14, 'GfG', 1, True]
c1 = a.count('GfG')
c2 = a.count(1)
print(c1)
print(c2)
[/GFGTABS]
2 3
Explanation:
- ‘GfG’ appears twice.
- 1 appears twice explicitly, but True is also counted because True == 1 in Python, making the total count three.
Example 2: Count occurrence of sub-list in list of Lists
The count() method does not search within nested lists and it will only count occurrences at the top level.
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a = [1, [2, 3], 1, [2, 3], 1]
c = a.count([2, 3])
print(c)
[/GFGTABS]
2
Explanation: The sublist [2, 3] is treated as a single element in the list. The count() method counts it twice because it appears twice as a nested list.
Example 3: Counting Word Frequency in a List
This example simulates word analysis in a sentence by counting how often a word appears.
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s = "python is easy to learn and python is powerful".split()
c1 = s.count("python")
c2 = s.count("is")
print(c1)
print(c2)
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count of python: 2 count of is: 2
Explanation:
- .split() method splits the string into a list of words.
- We use count() to check how many times “python” and “is” appear.
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