How to count the number of occurrences of an element in a List

Question

I have an ArrayList, a Collection class of Java, as follows:

ArrayList animals = new ArrayList();
animals.add(\"bat\         


        

Answer 1

A slightly more efficient approach might be

Map instances = new HashMap();

void add(String name) {
     AtomicInteger value = instances.get(name);
     if (value == null) 
        instances.put(name, new AtomicInteger(1));
     else
        value.incrementAndGet();
}