On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Giovanni Bajo <ra...@develer.com> wrote: > On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:11:37 -0800, Raymond Hettinger wrote: > >> The collections module in Python 2.7 and Python 3.1 has gotten a new >> Counter class that works like bags and multisets in other languages. >> >> I've adapted it for Python2.5/2.6 so people can start using it right >> away: >> http://docs.python.org/dev/library/collections.html#counter-objects >> >> Here's a link to the docs for the new class: >> http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576611/ > > Hi Raymond, > > * I'm not a native speaker, but why use the word "Counter"? A "counter" > to my ear sounds like a number that is increased each time an event > occurs; the website counter, eg, comes to mind. I can understanda its > meaning probably stretches to "an object that counts", but I really can't > think of it as a group of object, or a container of object. Moreover, I > find it a much more useful abstraction the idea of a "multi-set" (that > is, a set where elements can appear with multiple cardinality), rather > than stressing the concept of "counting" how many times each element > appears in the set. > > * I find it *very* confusing c.items() vs c.elements(). Items and > elements are synonymous (again, in my understanding of English).
I concur and would like to say additionally that having Counter's len() be the number of *unique* items as opposed to just the number of items seems a bit counterintuitive. Cheers, Chris -- Follow the path of the Iguana... http://rebertia.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
