[Python-Dev] function for counting items in a sequence

[Raymond Hettinger]

Instead of a separate function in collections, it may be sensible to stick with
the familiar and provide a dictionary contructor for the commonly encounter use
case of counting things:

@classmethod
def fromcount(cls, iterable):
    d = cls()
    for elem in iterable:
        d[elem] = d.get(elem, 0) + 1
    return d



Raymond