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Python: Which practice avoids a common mistake with Counter and Frequency Maps?

Difficulty:

Medium

Questions:

1

Time Limit:

2 minutes

Passing Score:

100%

Question

Which practice avoids a common mistake with Counter and Frequency Maps?

  1. Ignore the Counter and Frequency Maps issue and rely on team discipline instead of clearer APIs or invariants.
  2. Silence the Counter and Frequency Maps problem by using broad catches, hidden globals, or extra shared mutable state.
  3. Do not forget that zero and missing counts have slightly different semantics in certain Counter operations.
  4. Prefer the version of Counter and Frequency Maps that makes behavior less predictable as long as the code still runs.

Hint

Look for the option that protects correctness instead of hiding the problem.

Answer and rationale

Correct answer: C. Do not forget that zero and missing counts have slightly different semantics in certain Counter operations.

Do not forget that zero and missing counts have slightly different semantics in certain Counter operations. This is a common failure mode in real Python code and a frequent interview follow-up.

Track: Python