Frequency of each character in a String using unordered_map in C++

Last Updated : 12 Jul, 2025

Given a string str, the task is to find the frequency of each character of a string using an unordered_map in C++ STL.

Examples:

Input: str = "geeksforgeeks"
Output:
r 1
e 4
s 2
g 2
k 2
f 1
o 1

Input: str = "programming"
Output:
n 1
i 1
p 1
o 1
r 2
a 1
g 2
m 2

Approach:

Traverse each character of the given string str.
Check whether the current character is present in unordered_map or not.
If it is present, then update the frequency of the current characters else insert the characters with frequency 1 as shown below:

if(M.find(s[i])==M.end()) {
    M.insert(make_pair{s[i], 1});
}
else {
    M[s[i]]++;
}

4. Traverse the unordered_map and print the frequency of each characters stored as a mapped value.

Below is the implementation of the above approach:

CPP

// C++ program for the above approach
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;

void printFrequency(string str)
{
    // Define an unordered_map
    unordered_map<char, int> M;

    // Traverse string str check if
    // current character is present
    // or not
    for (int i = 0; str[i]; i++) 
    {
        // If the current characters
        // is not found then insert
        // current characters with
        // frequency 1
        if (M.find(str[i]) == M.end()) 
        {
            M.insert(make_pair(str[i], 1));
        }

        // Else update the frequency
        else 
        {
            M[str[i]]++;
        }
    }

    // Traverse the map to print the
    // frequency
    for (auto& it : M) {
        cout << it.first << ' ' << it.second << '\n';
    }
}

// Driver Code
int main()
{
    string str = "geeksforgeeks";

    // Function call
    printFrequency(str);
    return 0;
}

Output

r 1
e 4
s 2
g 2
k 2
f 1
o 1

Count of substrings of given string with frequency of each character at most K

hrishikeshkonderu

Improve

Article Tags :

Practice Tags :

Frequency of each character in a String using unordered_map in C++

Similar Reads

Thank You!

What kind of Experience do you want to share?