[Baypiggies] How to create a dict of counts using functional programming

[Braun Brelin]

Thanks to all for the advice.  I used the collections.Counter() method and
that did
exactly what I needed.

Braun Brelin


On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 7:31 PM, Alex Martelli <aleax at google.com> wrote:

> If for some weird reason in can't use collections.Counter, as David
> sensibly suggests, the "FP way" (slow and cranky in Python, which doesn't
> do tail-call optimization, NOT being a functional programming language) is
> recursion:
>
> _sentinel = object()
>
> def _count_aux(it, adict):
>     item = next(it, _sentinel)
>     return adict if item is _sentinel else _count_aux(it, dict(adict,
> *{item: adict.get(item, 0) + 1})
> def count(iterable):
>     return _count_aux(iter(iterable), {})
>
> The assignment in _count_aux's first statement is needed because iterators
> are not "peekable", and you need to refer to "the next item of the
> iterator" three times in the return statement -- if the bet terms included
> "totally avoid assignment" (I see no reason for the task except a weird
> bet!-) you could add another aux function (using argument passing in lieu
> of assignment, and making the recursion mutual).
>
> Except for winning weird bets, there are no positive aspects in using such
> a convoluted style in Python.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 4:01 AM, Braun Brelin <bbrelin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I am trying to do the following:
>> I have a list that looks like this:
>> ['1','2','7','8','8']
>>
>> I want to create a dictionary that looks like this:
>> {1:1, 2:1,7:1,8:2}
>> i.e. the value is the count of the number of times the key appears in
>> the list.  The catch is that I'm trying to do this in a functional
>> programming way, rather than iteratively.
>>
>> I'm trying to use something like map, or reduce or even dict, but I can't
>> figure out how to tell
>> python to increment the value.  In other words how do I even specify what
>> the value is, as it
>> seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg scenario.
>>
>> I can, for example create a dictionary that sets the values to a
>> constant, such as zero using FP,
>> but how do I tell it to increment the value for a dictionary that doesn't
>> yet exist as I'm in the process of
>> building it?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Braun Brelin
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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