Get the item that appears the most times in an array

Question

var store = ['1','2','2','3','4']; 

I want to find out that 2 appear the most in the array. How do I go about doing that?

Answer 1

I would do something like:

var store = ['1','2','2','3','4']; var frequency = {};  // array of frequency. var max = 0;  // holds the max frequency. var result;   // holds the max frequency element. for(var v in store) {         frequency[store[v]]=(frequency[store[v]] || 0)+1; // increment frequency.         if(frequency[store[v]] > max) { // is this frequency > max so far ?                 max = frequency[store[v]];  // update max.                 result = store[v];          // update result.         } } 

Answer 2

Solution with emphasis to Array.prototype.forEach and the problem of getting more than one key if the max count is shared among more items.

Edit: Proposal with one loop, only.

var store = ['1', '2', '2', '3', '4', '5', '5'],      distribution = {},      max = 0,      result = [];    store.forEach(function (a) {      distribution[a] = (distribution[a] || 0) + 1;      if (distribution[a] > max) {          max = distribution[a];          result = [a];          return;      }      if (distribution[a] === max) {          result.push(a);      }  });  console.log('max: ' + max);  console.log('key/s with max count: ' + JSON.stringify(result));  console.log(distribution);