What are some use cases for the Counter class in Python's collections module?

What are some use cases for the Counter class in Python's collections module?

The Counter class is great for counting hashable objects. Common use cases include counting occurrences of items in a list, tallying votes, or analyzing text frequency.

Can you give me an example of counting items in a list?

Sure! If you have a list like fruits = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange'], you can use Counter(fruits) to get Counter({'apple': 2, 'banana': 1, 'orange': 1}).

How about using it for text analysis?

For text analysis, you can use it to count word frequencies. For example, Counter('hello world hello') would give you Counter({'hello': 2, 'world': 1}).

Are there any performance benefits to using Counter?

Yes, Counter is optimized for counting and can be more efficient than manually iterating through items, especially with large datasets.