What is the use of the Python collections module?

The collections module in Python provides specialized container datatypes beyond the built-in list, dict, set, and tuple. These include namedtuples, defaultdict, Counter, OrderedDict, deque, and ChainMap, each designed to solve specific problems more efficiently than general-purpose containers.

from collections import Counter

# Example of using Counter to count occurrences of elements
counter = Counter(['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'apple'])
print(counter)  # Output: Counter({'apple': 3, 'banana': 2, 'orange': 1})

In this example, the Counter class is used to count the occurrences of each element in the list, producing a dictionary-like object where the keys are the elements and the values are their counts.

The collections module is extremely useful in cases where you need more powerful and flexible data structures, particularly in data processing, natural language processing, and algorithmic problem-solving.