counts = dict()
names = {"x", "y", "z", "x", "a"}
for name in names:
    counts[name] = counts.get(name, 0) + 1
print(counts)

Output:
D:\Python\helloworld\venv\Scripts\python.exe D:/Python/helloworld/app.py
{'a': 1, 'z': 1, 'x': 1, 'y': 1}

Process finished with exit code 0

(Jun-13-2020, 11:03 PM)deanhystad Wrote: You need to wrap you code in python tags, otherwise the indentation is lost.

You create a set named "names" that contains "x", "Y", "Z" and "a". You probably think "names" has two "x"'s because there are two "x"'s in the initializer, but one of the main things that differentiates a set from a list or tuple is it only holds one of each value.

Or did you think "names" was a dictionary because you used the curly brackets? Both sets and dictionaries use {}. The difference between a set and dictionary is the dictionary initializer contains key value pairs separated by ":".

So the answer to your question is "counts" shows only one count for each name because each name only appears once. Replace you curly brackets with square brackes [] to make names a list, and count["x"] will be 2.