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.

a = [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4]
c = a.count(1)
print(c)

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.

a = [1, 'GfG', 3.14, 'GfG', 1, True]
c1 = a.count('GfG')
c2 = a.count(1)
print(c1)
print(c2)

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.

a = [1, [2, 3], 1, [2, 3], 1]
c = a.count([2, 3])
print(c)

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.

s = "python is easy to learn and python is powerful".split()
c1 = s.count("python")
c2 = s.count("is")
print(c1)
print(c2)

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.

Related articles:

• Count occurrences of an element in a list
• How to Get the Number of Elements in a Python List?
• Find all elements count in list
• Find most frequent element in a list