How to count numbers less than a given number including duplicates

I have a task to count numbers less than a given number. I understand this for most cases except ones with duplicates. So for example a list [1,2,2,3,4] I want the out put of this to be a count of 2 since it not including the middle one

One way I’ve tried this target is the number is the given number to find the less than to

count=0
for i in list:
    if i< target:
        count=count+1
return count 

I know if I put = it will count both twos how can I fix this with what I have now and it still being a list

>Solution :

I would first remove duplicates like this:

res = []
[res.append(x) for x in list if x not in res]

and then you could get the number of values in the list without duplicates with the len function: len(res) or check each value to make sure it meets criteria before counting like being less then a number:

count = 0
for i in res:
    if i < target: count += 1
return count

Although it might be faster to create a list of numbers that are both not duplicates and meet the criteria, and then just take the length of that list:

res = []
[res.append(x) for x in list if x not in res and x < target]
return len(res)