How to find number of instances of an item in a python list

Question

I want to part of a script to be something like this.

if list[1] is in list.pop n times:
      return True

Answer 1

Simply use:

list.count(element)

Example:

>>> [1,2,3,4,2,1].count(1)
2

Answer 2

Number of items in a list:

len(myList)

Number of times the i th element occurs in a list:

myList.count(mylist[i])

Answer 3

Or you can use Counter :

>>> from collections import Counter
>>> Counter([1, 2, 3, 1, 1])
Counter({1: 3, 2: 1, 3: 1})
>>> 

This is good if you want to get all the counts of the distinct elements in the list one time.