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Programming Problems · Q1

Q.Write a program to find the number of times an element occurs in the list.

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✓ Free question

Frequency counting is the accumulator pattern applied to a condition: walk the list once, add 1 to a counter each time the element matches — Python's built-in list.count() does exactly this in one call.

The idea. "How many times does x occur?" is a single-pass scan: compare every element with x and count the matches. Writing the loop yourself shows the logic; count() is the idiomatic shortcut and a good cross-check.

Program:

myList = eval(input("Enter the list: "))
element = eval(input("Enter the element to count: "))

count = 0
for item in myList:
    if item == element:
        count = count + 1

print(element, "occurs", count, "time(s) in the list")
print("Cross-check with count():", myList.count(element))

Key lines: eval(input(...)) lets the user type a whole list literal like [10, 20, 10] (the NCERT-style input idiom); the for loop visits each element; the if adds 1 only on a match.

Expected output (sample run):

Enter the list: [10, 20, 10, 30, 10, 40]
Enter the element to count: 10
10 occurs 3 time(s) in the list
Cross-check with count(): 3

Trace for the sample:

itemitem == 10?count
10Yes1
20No1
10Yes2
30No2
10Yes3
40No3

If the element is absent (e.g. 99), the counter simply stays 0 and the program honestly reports 0 occurrences — no special case needed.

Tip

In exam answers, showing the manual loop earns the logic marks; mentioning myList.count(element) shows you know the library. Both run in O(n) time — every element must be examined once.

✓Final answer

The program scans the list once, incrementing count whenever item == element, and reports the total; for the sample list [10, 20, 10, 30, 10, 40] with element 10, the output is "10 occurs 3 time(s) in the list".

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