Counting the occurrences / frequency of array elements

Question

In Javascript, I\'m trying to take an initial array of number values and count the elements inside it. Ideally, the result would be two new arrays, the first specifying each

Answer 1

Edit 2020: this is a pretty old answer (nine years). Extending the native prototype will always generate discussion. Although I think the programmer is free to choose her own programming style, here's a (more modern) approach to the problem without extending Array.prototype:

{
  // create array with some pseudo random values (1 - 5)
  const arr = Array.from({length: 100})
    .map( () => Math.floor(1 + Math.random() * 5) );
  // frequencies using a reducer
  const arrFrequencies = arr.reduce((acc, value) => 
      ({ ...acc, [value]: acc[value] + 1 || 1}), {} )
  console.log(`Value 4 occurs ${arrFrequencies[4]} times in arrFrequencies`);

  // bonus: restore Array from frequencies
  const arrRestored = Object.entries(arrFrequencies)
    .reduce( (acc, [key, value]) => acc.concat(Array(value).fill(+key)), [] );
  console.log(arrRestored.join());  
}

.as-console-wrapper { top: 0; max-height: 100% !important; }

The old (2011) answer: you could extend Array.prototype, like this:

{
  Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
    var l = this.length,
      result = {
        all: []
      };
    while (l--) {
      result[this[l]] = result[this[l]] ? ++result[this[l]] : 1;
    }
    // all pairs (label, frequencies) to an array of arrays(2)
    for (var l in result) {
      if (result.hasOwnProperty(l) && l !== 'all') {
        result.all.push([l, result[l]]);
      }
    }
    return result;
  };

  var freqs = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4].frequencies();
  console.log(`freqs[2]: ${freqs[2]}`); //=> 5
  
  // or
  var freqs = '1,1,2,one,one,2,2,22,three,four,five,three,three,five'
    .split(',')
    .frequencies();
    
  console.log(`freqs.three: ${freqs.three}`); //=> 3
  
// Alternatively you can utilize Array.map:

    Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
      var freqs = {
        sum: 0
      };
      this.map(function(a) {
        if (!(a in this)) {
          this[a] = 1;
        } else {
          this[a] += 1;
        }
        this.sum += 1;
        return a;
      }, freqs);
      return freqs;
    }
}

.as-console-wrapper { top: 0; max-height: 100% !important; }

Answer 2

Using Lodash

const values = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];
const frequency = _.map(_.groupBy(values), val => ({ value: val[0], frequency: val.length }));
console.log(frequency);

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.15/lodash.min.js"></script>

Answer 3

There is a much better and easy way that we can do this using ramda.js. Code sample here

const ary = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]; R.countBy(r=> r)(ary) countBy documentation is at documentation

Answer 4

I know this question is old but I realized there are too few solutions where you get the count array as asked with a minimal code so here is mine

// The initial array we want to count occurences
var initial = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];  

// The count array asked for
var count = Array.from(new Set(initial)).map(val => initial.filter(v => v === val).length);  

// Outputs [ 3, 5, 1, 1 ]

Beside you can get the set from that initial array with

var set = Array.from(new Set(initial));  

//set = [5, 2, 9, 4]  

Answer 5

const data = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]

function count(arr) {
  return arr.reduce((prev, curr) => (prev[curr] = ++prev[curr] || 1, prev), {})
}

console.log(count(data))

Answer 6

I was solving a similar problem on codewars and devised the following solution which worked for me.

This gives the highest count of an integer in an array and also the integer itself. I think it can be applied to string array as well.

To properly sort Strings, remove the function(a, b){return a-b} from inside the sort() portion

function mostFrequentItemCount(collection) {
    collection.sort(function(a, b){return a-b});
    var i=0;
    var ans=[];
    var int_ans=[];
    while(i<collection.length)
    {
        if(collection[i]===collection[i+1])
        {
            int_ans.push(collection[i]);
        }
        else
        {
            int_ans.push(collection[i]);
            ans.push(int_ans);
            int_ans=[];
        }
        i++;
    }

    var high_count=0;
    var high_ans;

    i=0;
    while(i<ans.length)
    {
        if(ans[i].length>high_count)
        {
            high_count=ans[i].length;
            high_ans=ans[i][0];
        }
        i++;
    }
    return high_ans;
}