Count items by group.

Group repeated values and report each count.

PowerShell snippet.ps1
$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'
'red','blue','red' | Group-Object | Sort-Object Name | ForEach-Object { '{0}: {1}' -f $_.Name, $_.Count }

Expected output EXAMPLE

blue: 1
red: 2

Details

Requires PowerShell 7. Save as snippet.ps1 and run pwsh -NoProfile -File snippet.ps1. Tested on Linux; these examples use portable paths and cmdlets. Sorting groups makes the displayed order explicit.

✓ Verified

Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · PowerShell 7.6.6 · powershell 7.6.6-1.deb

Test inputs, results and environment

The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.

Architecture / host kernel
x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
Snippet identity / locale
uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
Interpreter invocation
pwsh -NoLogo -NoProfile -NonInteractive -File snippet.ps1
Container image ID
sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3
Code SHA-256
709ec212538a3528a11c7b4e5dca08739eb2aef196f45d9e117b798b016619cd
Dependencies
powershell 7.6.6-1.deb

Test input setup

These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.

# No input files required.

Observed standard output

blue: 1
red: 2

Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.