Counting specific chars in a string

It looks like there is no function for counting the amount of a certain character(s) in a string (or I am just dumb). Right now I've got this:

Code:

---

Public Function StrCount(String1, String2) As Long
For x = 1 To Len(String1)
 If Mid(String1, x, Len(String2)) = String2 Then StrCount = StrCount + 1
Next x
End Function

---

But this seems to work too:

Code:

---

Public Function StrCount(String1, String2) As Long
Dim sCount() As String
sCount = Split(String1, String2)
StrCount = UBound(sCount)
End Function

---

But surely there is a VB function that I missed, or an API. There's a few string API functions, but none of them seem to do anything related to this...

Any Ideas?:confused: :confused: :confused:

No, but this will be faster.

Code:

---

Function CountCharacter(byval strText as string, _
        byval strCharsToCount, _
        bval lngCompare) as long
    Dim I              as long
    Dim lngCount as long
    Dim lngInstr  as long
    Dim L              as long
    I = 1
    L = Len(strCharsToCount)
    lf L = 0 then exit function
    Do
      'lngcompare  0 = BinaryCompare, 1=textcompare
        lngInstr = Instr(I,strText, _
                                strCharsToCount, _
                                lngCompare)
        If lngInstr = 0 then Exit Do
        lngCount = lngCount + 1
        I = lngInstr + L
    Loop
    CountCharacter = lngCount

---

VB Code:

Private Function InStrCount(Source As String, Search As String) As Long
    InStrCount = Len(Source) - Len(Replace(Source, Search, ""))
End Function

Or and easy, if not necessarily fast, method:

Code:

---

Count = UBound(Split(TheString, TheChar)) + 1

---

- gaffa

The fastest seems to be the one which involves splitting and counting the array...

Byte arrays are always the fastest appraoch to processing each character in a string.

Test the functions on a string of 500,000 characters to quantify the difference, the results might shock you.

Yeah, the strings I tested were only about 7 or 8 thou, using a 500 thou character string showed that the Byte Array was actually a fair bit faster.

Oh, Nucleus, I just realised that your code doesn't work with Carriage Return Line Feeds (vbCrLf). Doesn't matter though because that's not what I'm after.

Yes that is because carriage return is two consecutive characters not one, are you changing the spec on me? Ha!

No no no, but I was wondering why it didn't work when I tried a multibyte constant...

He, he,

My little one liner will work for strings of any length....

I'm actually pretty surprised that it's reasonably fast, I honestly thought ity would be as slow as a wet week, but there you go.

- gaffa

Yes the choice is easy one liner with vb where speed is not a concern using split/replace, but if speed is important then go with byte arrays.

If you want to count multibyte strings and speed is required, just yell.

Speed is an issue, but not with multibyte strings...

Ok so i was bored.

I wrote the mutibyte code and compared replace,split and byte arrays.

On my pc byte array solution was 3300% faster than both replace and split.

The project is attached if it interests you :rolleyes:

3300% eh? Not bad at all. In fact I'd say that's the best you could get...

Yeah, but you have to write so much more code, which potentially introduces more bugs too. So in 99%of the cases I would go with Gaffa's one liner.