collections.Counter

class collections.Counter([iterable-or-mapping])

A Counter is a dict subclass for counting hashable objects. It is an unordered collection where elements are stored as dictionary keys and their counts are stored as dictionary values. Counts are allowed to be any integer value including zero or negative counts. The Counter class is similar to bags or multisets in other languages.

Elements are counted from an iterable or initialized from another mapping (or counter):

>>> c = Counter()                           # a new, empty counter
>>> c = Counter('gallahad')                 # a new counter from an iterable
>>> c = Counter({'red': 4, 'blue': 2})      # a new counter from a mapping
>>> c = Counter(cats=4, dogs=8)             # a new counter from keyword args

Counter objects have a dictionary interface except that they return a zero count for missing items instead of raising a KeyError:

>>> c = Counter(['eggs', 'ham'])
>>> c['bacon']                              # count of a missing element is zero
0

Setting a count to zero does not remove an element from a counter. Use del to remove it entirely:

>>> c['sausage'] = 0                        # counter entry with a zero count
>>> del c['sausage']                        # del actually removes the entry

Counter objects support three methods beyond those available for all dictionaries:

elements()

Return an iterator over elements repeating each as many times as its count. Elements are returned in arbitrary order. If an element’s count is less than one, elements() will ignore it.

>>> c = Counter(a=4, b=2, c=0, d=-2)
>>> sorted(c.elements())
['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'b', 'b']

most_common([n])

Return a list of the n most common elements and their counts from the most common to the least. If n is omitted or None, most_common() returns all elements in the counter. Elements with equal counts are ordered arbitrarily:

>>> Counter('abracadabra').most_common(3)  
[('a', 5), ('r', 2), ('b', 2)]

subtract([iterable-or-mapping])

Elements are subtracted from an iterable or from another mapping (or counter). Like dict.update() but subtracts counts instead of replacing them. Both inputs and outputs may be zero or negative.

>>> c = Counter(a=4, b=2, c=0, d=-2)
>>> d = Counter(a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4)
>>> c.subtract(d)
>>> c
Counter({'a': 3, 'b': 0, 'c': -3, 'd': -6})

New in version 3.2.

The usual dictionary methods are available for Counter objects except for two which work differently for counters.

fromkeys(iterable)

This class method is not implemented for Counter objects.

update([iterable-or-mapping])

Elements are counted from an iterable or added-in from another mapping (or counter). Like dict.update() but adds counts instead of replacing them. Also, the iterable is expected to be a sequence of elements, not a sequence of (key, value) pairs.