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authorRaymond Hettinger <python@rcn.com>2009-02-25 22:48:24 (GMT)
committerRaymond Hettinger <python@rcn.com>2009-02-25 22:48:24 (GMT)
commita665853bab7ac309f224fa1e9b96d81aa9227838 (patch)
treefc8b14b819c9f015392dd2db70c22915eb0ce861
parente3bc0eff256e5eda47a4190171db65ad5b9102db (diff)
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Clarify Counter() docs.
-rw-r--r--Doc/library/collections.rst14
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/collections.rst b/Doc/library/collections.rst
index 2f7785e..d6d7ebb 100644
--- a/Doc/library/collections.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/collections.rst
@@ -251,14 +251,12 @@ Common patterns for working with :class:`Counter` objects::
c.most_common()[:-n:-1] # n least common elements
c += Counter() # remove zero and negative counts
-Several multiset mathematical operations are provided for combining
-:class:`Counter` objects. Multisets are counters with the restriction
-that all counts are at least one. They are like regular sets but are
-allowed to contain repeated elements. Addition and subtraction combine
-counters by adding or subtracting the counts of corresponding elements.
-Intersection and union return the minimum and maximum of corresponding
-counts. Each operation can accept inputs with signed counts,
-but the output excludes results with counts less than one.
+Several mathematical operations are provided for combining :class:`Counter`
+objects to produce multisets (counters that have counts greater than zero).
+Addition and subtraction combine counters by adding or subtracting the counts
+of corresponding elements. Intersection and union return the minimum and
+maximum of corresponding counts. Each operation can accept inputs with signed
+counts, but the output will exclude results with counts of zero or less.
>>> c = Counter(a=3, b=1)
>>> d = Counter(a=1, b=2)