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[m.s.mould at durham.ac.uk]

Hi,
I have what I suspect to be a fairly simple problem while using python Numeric.
I am attempting to count the number of times that an element 'b' occurs in
numeric array 'a'. I tried unsuccessfully to find a more efficient function to
do this for me such as that offered when using a list, but couldn't seem to find
anything for Numeric arrays. However, I suspect that my loop is not the most
efficient way to achieve this.

def countel(a, b): #counts the number of times value 'b' is found in array 'a'
    i=0
    count=0
    while (i<len(a)):
        j=0
        while (j<len(a[0])):
            if (a[i][j]==b):
                count=count+1
            else:
                pass
            j=j+1
        i=i+1
    return count

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated,
Matt