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

Edit 2020: this is a pretty old answer (nine years). Extending the native prototype will always generate discussion. Although I think the programmer is free to choose her own programming style, here's a (more modern) approach to the problem without extending Array.prototype:

{
  // create array with some pseudo random values (1 - 5)
  const arr = Array.from({length: 100})
    .map( () => Math.floor(1 + Math.random() * 5) );
  // frequencies using a reducer
  const arrFrequencies = arr.reduce((acc, value) => 
      ({ ...acc, [value]: acc[value] + 1 || 1}), {} )
  console.log(`Value 4 occurs ${arrFrequencies[4]} times in arrFrequencies`);

  // bonus: restore Array from frequencies
  const arrRestored = Object.entries(arrFrequencies)
    .reduce( (acc, [key, value]) => acc.concat(Array(value).fill(+key)), [] );
  console.log(arrRestored.join());  
}

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The old (2011) answer: you could extend Array.prototype, like this:

{
  Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
    var l = this.length,
      result = {
        all: []
      };
    while (l--) {
      result[this[l]] = result[this[l]] ? ++result[this[l]] : 1;
    }
    // all pairs (label, frequencies) to an array of arrays(2)
    for (var l in result) {
      if (result.hasOwnProperty(l) && l !== 'all') {
        result.all.push([l, result[l]]);
      }
    }
    return result;
  };

  var freqs = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4].frequencies();
  console.log(`freqs[2]: ${freqs[2]}`); //=> 5
  
  // or
  var freqs = '1,1,2,one,one,2,2,22,three,four,five,three,three,five'
    .split(',')
    .frequencies();
    
  console.log(`freqs.three: ${freqs.three}`); //=> 3
  
// Alternatively you can utilize Array.map:

    Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
      var freqs = {
        sum: 0
      };
      this.map(function(a) {
        if (!(a in this)) {
          this[a] = 1;
        } else {
          this[a] += 1;
        }
        this.sum += 1;
        return a;
      }, freqs);
      return freqs;
    }
}

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