python - Count frequency of words in a list and sort by frequency

Question

I am using Python 3.3

I need to create two lists, one for the unique words and the other for the frequencies of the word.

I have to sort the unique word list based on the frequencies list so that the word with the highest frequency is first in the list.

I have the design in text but am uncertain how to implement it in Python.

The methods I have found so far use either Counter or dictionaries which we have not learned. I have already created the list from the file containing all the words but do not know how to find the frequency of each word in the list. I know I will need a loop to do this but cannot figure it out.

Here's the basic design:

 original list = ["the", "car",....]
 newlst = []
 frequency = []
 for word in the original list
       if word not in newlst:
           newlst.append(word)
           set frequency = 1
       else
           increase the frequency
 sort newlst based on frequency list 

Answer 1

use this

from collections import Counter
list1=['apple','egg','apple','banana','egg','apple']
counts = Counter(list1)
print(counts)
# Counter({'apple': 3, 'egg': 2, 'banana': 1})