Python - Counter.items(), Counter.keys() and Counter.values()

Last Updated : 10 Jul, 2024

Counter class is a special type of object data-set provided with the collections module in Python3. Collections module provides the user with specialized container datatypes, thus, providing an alternative to Python’s general-purpose built-ins like dictionaries, lists and tuples. Counter is a sub-class that is used to count hashable objects. It implicitly creates a hash table of an iterable when invoked.

Counter.items()

The Counter.items() method helps to see the elements of the list along with their respective frequencies in a tuple.

Syntax : Counter.items()
Parameters : None
Returns : object of class dict.values()

Example :

Python3

# importing the module
from collections import Counter

# making a list
list = [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
        6, 7, 9, 2, 3, 4, 8]

# instantiating a Counter object
ob = Counter(list)

# Counter.items()
items = ob.items()

print("The datatype is "
      + str(type(items)))

# displaying the dict_items
print(items)

# iterating over the dict_items
for i in items:
    print(i)

Output :

The datatype is
dict_items([(1, 2), (2, 2), (3, 2), (4, 2), (5, 1), (6, 1), (7, 1), (9, 1), (8, 1)])
(1, 2)
(2, 2)
(3, 2)
(4, 2)
(5, 1)
(6, 1)
(7, 1)
(9, 1)
(8, 1)

Counter.keys()

The Counter.keys() method helps to see the unique elements in the list.

Syntax : Counter.keys()
Parameters : None
Returns : object of class dict_items

Example :

Python3

# importing the module
from collections import Counter

# making a list
list = [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
        6, 7, 9, 2, 3, 4, 8]

# instantiating a Counter object
ob = Counter(list)

# Counter.keys()
keys = ob.keys()

print("The datatype is "
      + str(type(keys)))

# displaying the dict_items
print(keys)

# iterating over the dict_items
for i in keys:
    print(i)

Output :

The datatype is
dict_keys([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 8])
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
8

Counter.values()

The Counter.values() method helps to see the frequencies of each unique element.

Syntax : Counter.values()
Parameters : None
Returns : object of class dict_items

Example :

Python3

# importing the module
from collections import Counter

# making a list
list = [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
        6, 7, 9, 2, 3, 4, 8]

# instantiating a Counter object
ob = Counter(list)

# Counter.values()
values = ob.values()

print("The datatype is "
      + str(type(values)))

# displaying the dict_items
print(values)

# iterating over the dict_items
for i in values:
    print(i)