Dictionaries & sets
Key–value maps, uniqueness, counting, grouping, and fast lookups.
Build a defaultdict histogram of categories in Python
Count occurrences of each category in a list using collections.defaultdict(int) for automatic initialization.
from collections import defaultdict
def build_category_histogram(items):
"""Count occurrences of each category in a list of items."""
histogram = defaultdict(int)
for item in items:
histogram[item] += 1
return dict(histogram)
if __name__ == "__main__":
categories = ["fruit", "vegetable", …Count Words in Python with Dictionaries and Sets
Text analysis example that counts total words, finds unique words with a set, and tallies character frequencies with a dictionary.
def analyze_text(text: str) -> dict:
"""Count words, find unique words, and show common characters."""
words = text.lower().split()
word_count = len(words)
unique_words = set(words)
char_counts = {}
for word in words:
for char in word:
if char.isalpha():
…How to Count Elements and Find Duplicates in a Python List
Count occurrences of each element in a list, extract unique values, and identify duplicates using Python dictionaries and sets.
def analyze_counts(data):
"""Count elements, return unique values, and find duplicates."""
# Count occurrences using a dictionary
counts = {}
for item in data:
counts[item] = counts.get(item, 0) + 1
# Alternative compact approach with set
unique_items = set(data)
# Fi…How to Count Word Frequencies in Python
Count how often each word appears in a string and list the unique words using Python dictionaries and sets.
def text_processor(text):
words = text.lower().split()
word_count = {}
for word in words:
word_count[word] = word_count.get(word, 0) + 1
unique_words = set(words)
return word_count, unique_words
if __name__ == "__main__":
sample_text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and t…How to Count Word Frequencies in Python with Counter and Sets
This code processes a text string by lowercasing, splitting into words, counting frequencies with Counter, and extracting unique and sorted word lists using sets.
from collections import Counter
def process_text(text):
words = text.lower().split()
word_counts = Counter(words)
unique_words = set(words)
sorted_words = sorted(unique_words)
return {
"total_words": len(words),
"unique_words": len(unique_words),
"word_frequencies": di…How to Use Counter for Most Common Elements in Python
This code demonstrates how to find the most frequent elements in a list using Python's Counter class from the collections module.
from collections import Counter
def most_common_elements(items, n=1):
"""Return the n most common elements and their counts."""
counter = Counter(items)
return counter.most_common(n)
if __name__ == "__main__":
data = ["apple", "banana", "apple", "orange", "banana", "apple", "grape"]
print(most_co…Multiset with Counter update and elements in Python
Demonstrates using collections.Counter as a multiset: updating counts with update() and iterating elements() to get repeated items.
from collections import Counter
multiset = Counter(['apple', 'banana', 'apple'])
multiset.update(['banana', 'cherry', 'apple'])
print("Elements after update:", sorted(multiset.elements()))
print("Counts:", dict(multiset))
print("Most common:", multiset.most_common(2))Browse by section
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Dictionaries & sets — Python code examples
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This page collects dictionaries & sets snippets — short, copy-ready Python you can paste into our free online IDE and run without installing anything. Each sample includes a plain-English explanation and the full source code.
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