Counting the occurrences / frequency of array elements

Question

In Javascript, I\'m trying to take an initial array of number values and count the elements inside it. Ideally, the result would be two new arrays, the first specifying each

Answer 1

How about an ECMAScript2015 option.

const a = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];

const aCount = new Map([...new Set(a)].map(
    x => [x, a.filter(y => y === x).length]
));

aCount.get(5)  // 3
aCount.get(2)  // 5
aCount.get(9)  // 1
aCount.get(4)  // 1

This example passes the input array to the Set constructor creating a collection of unique values. The spread syntax then expands these values into a new array so we can call map and translate this into a two-dimensional array of [value, count] pairs - i.e. the following structure:

Array [
   [5, 3],
   [2, 5],
   [9, 1],
   [4, 1]
]

The new array is then passed to the Map constructor resulting in an iterable object:

Map {
    5 => 3,
    2 => 5,
    9 => 1,
    4 => 1
}

The great thing about a Map object is that it preserves data-types - that is to say aCount.get(5) will return 3 but aCount.get("5") will return undefined. It also allows for any value / type to act as a key meaning this solution will also work with an array of objects.

function frequencies(/* {Array} */ a){
    return new Map([...new Set(a)].map(
        x => [x, a.filter(y => y === x).length]
    ));
}

let foo = { value: 'foo' },
    bar = { value: 'bar' },
    baz = { value: 'baz' };

let aNumbers = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4],
    aObjects = [foo, bar, foo, foo, baz, bar];

frequencies(aNumbers).forEach((val, key) => console.log(key + ': ' + val));
frequencies(aObjects).forEach((val, key) => console.log(key.value + ': ' + val));