How to count certain elements in array?

Question

[this answer is a bit dated: read the edits]

Say hello to your friends: map and filter and reduce and forEach and every etc.

(I only occasionally write for-loops in javascript, because of block-level scoping is missing, so you have to use a function as the body of the loop anyway if you need to capture or clone your iteration index or value. For-loops are more efficient generally, but sometimes you need a closure.)

The most readable way:

[....].filter(x => x==2).length

(We could have written .filter(function(x){return x==2}).length instead)

The following is more space-efficient (O(1) rather than O(N)), but I'm not sure how much of a benefit/penalty you might pay in terms of time (not more than a constant factor since you visit each element exactly once):

[....].reduce((total,x) => (x==2 ? total+1 : total), 0)

(If you need to optimize this particular piece of code, a for loop might be faster on some browsers... you can test things on jsperf.com.)

---

You can then be elegant and turn it into a prototype function:

[1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 8, 9, 2].count(2)

Like this:

Object.defineProperties(Array.prototype, {
    count: {
        value: function(value) {
            return this.filter(x => x==value).length;
        }
    }
});

You can also stick the regular old for-loop technique (see other answers) inside the above property definition (again, that would likely be much faster).

---

2017 edit:

Whoops, this answer has gotten more popular than the correct answer. Actually, just use the accepted answer. While this answer may be cute, the js compilers probably don't (or can't due to spec) optimize such cases. So you should really write a simple for loop:

Object.defineProperties(Array.prototype, {
    count: {
        value: function(query) {
            /* 
               Counts number of occurrences of query in array, an integer >= 0 
               Uses the javascript == notion of equality.
            */
            var count = 0;
            for(let i=0; i<this.length; i++)
                if (this[i]==query)
                    count++;
            return count;
        }
    }
});

You could define a version .countStrictEq(...) which used the === notion of equality. The notion of equality may be important to what you're doing! (for example [1,10,3,'10'].count(10)==2, because numbers like '4'==4 in javascript... hence calling it .countEq or .countNonstrict stresses it uses the == operator.)

Caveat: Defining a common name on the prototype should be done with care. It is fine if you control your code, but bad if everyone wants to declare their own [].count function, especially if they behave differently. You may ask yourself "but .count(query) surely sounds quite perfect and canonical"... but consider perhaps you could do something like [].count(x=> someExpr of x). In that case you define functions like countIn(query, container) (under myModuleName.countIn), or something, or [].myModuleName_count().

Also consider using your own multiset data structure (e.g. like python's 'collections.Counter') to avoid having to do the counting in the first place. This works for exact matches of the form [].filter(x=> x==???).length (worst case O(N) down to O(1)), and modified will speed up queries of the form [].filter(filterFunction).length (roughly by a factor of #total/#duplicates).

class Multiset extends Map {
    constructor(...args) {
        super(...args);
    }
    add(elem) {
        if (!this.has(elem))
            this.set(elem, 1);
        else
            this.set(elem, this.get(elem)+1);
    }
    remove(elem) {
        var count = this.has(elem) ? this.get(elem) : 0;
        if (count>1) {
            this.set(elem, count-1);
        } else if (count==1) {
            this.delete(elem);
        } else if (count==0)
            throw `tried to remove element ${elem} of type ${typeof elem} from Multiset, but does not exist in Multiset (count is 0 and cannot go negative)`;
            // alternatively do nothing {}
    }
}

Demo:

> counts = new Multiset([['a',1],['b',3]])
Map(2) {"a" => 1, "b" => 3}

> counts.add('c')
> counts
Map(3) {"a" => 1, "b" => 3, "c" => 1}

> counts.remove('a')
> counts
Map(2) {"b" => 3, "c" => 1}

> counts.remove('a')
Uncaught tried to remove element a of type string from Multiset, but does not exist in Multiset (count is 0 and cannot go negative)

sidenote: Though, if you still wanted the functional-programming way (or a throwaway one-liner without overriding Array.prototype), you could write it more tersely nowadays as [...].filter(x => x==2).length. If you care about performance, note that while this is asymptotically the same performance as the for-loop (O(N) time), it may require O(N) extra memory (instead of O(1) memory) because it will almost certainly generate an intermediate array and then count the elements of that intermediate array.

Modern JavaScript:

Note that you should always use triple equals === when doing comparison in JavaScript (JS). The triple equals makes sure, that JS comparison behaves like double equals == in other languages (there is one exception, see below). The following solution shows how to solve this the functional way, which will never have out of bounds error:

// Let has local scope
let array = [1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 8, 9, 2]

// Functional filter with an Arrow function
array.filter(x => x === 2).length  // -> 3

The following anonymous Arrow function (lambda function) in JavaScript:

(x) => {
   const k = 2
   return k * x
}

may be simplified to this concise form for a single input:

x => 2 * x

where the return is implied.

Always use triple equals: === for comparison in JS, with the exception of when checking for nullability: if (something == null) {} as you include a check for undefined if you only use double equals, as in this case.

Very simple:

var count = 0;
for(var i = 0; i < array.length; ++i){
    if(array[i] == 2)
        count++;
}

2017: If someone is still interested in the question, my solution is the following:

const arrayToCount = [1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 8, 9, 2];
const result = arrayToCount.filter(i => i === 2).length;
console.log('number of the found elements: ' + result);

If you are using lodash or underscore the _.countBy method will provide an object of aggregate totals keyed by each value in the array. You can turn this into a one-liner if you only need to count one value:

_.countBy(['foo', 'foo', 'bar'])['foo']; // 2

This also works fine on arrays of numbers. The one-liner for your example would be:

_.countBy([1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 8, 9, 2])[2]; // 3

Here is an ES2017+ way to get the counts for all array items in O(N):

const arr = [1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 8, 9, 2];
const counts = {};

arr.forEach((el) => {
  counts[el] = counts[el] ? (counts[el] += 1) : 1;
});

You can also optionally sort the output:

const countsSorted = Object.entries(counts).sort(([_, a], [__, b]) => a - b);

console.log(countsSorted) for your example array:

[
  [ '2', 3 ],
  [ '1', 1 ],
  [ '3', 1 ],
  [ '5', 1 ],
  [ '8', 1 ],
  [ '9', 1 ]
]