This is not about "code golfing", the "sort|uniq -c|sort" combo is in the hall of fame of great code lines. The PATH thing in my script was an unnecessary distractor, consider this:

    file -b /bin/* /usr/bin/* |cut -d' ' -f-2|sort|uniq -c|sort -n

There are no bizarre escapes nor anything. Besides, the "file" program is called only once. The python equivalent that you wrote may be better if you want to store it somewhere, but it takes a lot to type, and it serves a different purpose. The shell line is something that you write once and run it because it falls naturally from your fingers. Moreover, you can run it everywhere, as it works in bash, zsh, pdksh and any old shell. The python version requires an appropriate python version installed (3 not 2).