python cache dictionary - counting number of hits <p>I'm implementing a caching service in python. I'm using a simple dictionary so far. What I'd like to do is to count number of hits (number of times when a stored value was retrieved by the key). Python builtin dict has no such possibility (as far as I know). I searched through 'python dictionary count' and found <code>Counter</code> (also on stackoverflow), but this doesn't satisfy my requirements I guess. I don't need to count what already exists. I need to increment something that come from the outside. And I think that storing another dictionary with hits counting only is not the best data structure I can get :)</p> <p>Do you have any ideas how to do it efficiently?</p>