I am trying to count the duplicate characters of strings in a list; additionally I increment a variable depending on whether it is a duplicate 2 or 3 times.

However, out of my 250 string test list, it is returning a total count of 641, so I'm sure something's wrong.

Here is my code:

```
def findDupesNum(listy):
    a = []      # the current string's character list
    b = 0       # the 2-dupe counter
    c = 0       # the 3-dupe counter
    for i in listy:
        a.clear()
        for x in i:
            if x in a and a.count(x) == 1 and x != '':
                b += 1
            elif x in a and a.count(x) == 2 and x != '':
                c += 1
                b -= 1
            a.append(x)
        print('b = ' + str(b) + ' and c = ' + str(c))

```