parsing strings...len,mid,instr....

Howdy,
I would like to use one of the functions such as len,mid,instr to find out the exact number of specific letters in a string.
lets say the string is "Hello, take me to your leader".
and I want to find out how many of the letters "h","t" and "a" that are in this string.
the code I tryed to use is this.

Dim M As Integer
M = 1
For M = 1 To Len(textString)
If Mid(letters, M, 1) = "h" or "t" or "a" Then
intnumletters = intnumletters + 1
End If
Next M
NumOfMyletters = intnumletters

but this gives me a type mismatch error.
if I only try to use one letter(say "h") then it works fine but when I use Or it no longer works.
any help or suggestion would be great.
thank you

If (Mid(letters, M, 1) = "h" or Mid(letters, M, 1) = "t" or Mid(letters, M, 1)) = "a" Then

Code:

---

Dim n As Integer, a As Integer, match As String, textstring As String, numofmyletters As Integer
textstring = "ödahtahtaslästhat": match = "hta"
For n = 1 To Len(match)
    a = InStr(textstring, Mid(match, n, 1))
    Do While a
        numofmyletters = numofmyletters + 1
        a = InStr(a + 1, textstring, Mid(match, n, 1))
    Loop
Next n
MsgBox numofmyletters

---

thanks for the help. I used your code ledger, that is kind of what I was trying to do but I geuss I had the syntax wrong.
Kedaman, I like your code BUT I don't understand it yet so I will be studying it for future use.
thanks to both of you.

I like Kedaman's method, but you can clean it up a bit by placing it in a function and naming variables properly.

Code:

---

Function Match(sIn As String, sPattern As String) As Integer
   
    Dim iPos As Integer
    Dim iLetterCount As Integer
   
    For I = 1 To Len(sPattern)
        iPos = InStr(sIn, Mid(sPattern, I, 1))
        Do While iPos
            iLetterCount = iLetterCount + 1
            iPos = InStr(iPos + 1, sIn, Mid(sPattern, I, 1))
        Loop
    Next I
   
    Match = iLetterCount

End Function


Private Sub Command1_Click()

    'USAGE: Match("String to search", "Pattern")
    Retval = Match("Hello, take me to your leader", "hta")
    MsgBox (Retval)

End Sub

---

Sorry for not being present,m

AS you know INSTR searches for the first character in a string and returns the position, if you specify the start position, it will continue to search from that point. By searching from a + 1, you will avoid to find the same character over&over again. Also Instr will return 0 if there are no more characters found, so it will exit the loop on 0.

OK?