Python List count() method (original) (raw)
Last Updated : 27 Apr, 2025
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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Python
``
`a = [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4]
c = a.count(1) print(c)
`
``
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**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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Python
``
`a = [1, 'GfG', 3.14, 'GfG', 1, True]
c1 = a.count('GfG') c2 = a.count(1)
print(c1) print(c2)
`
``
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**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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Python
``
`a = [1, [2, 3], 1, [2, 3], 1]
c = a.count([2, 3]) print(c)
`
``
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**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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Python
``
`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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Output
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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