How to check how many times something occurs in a string in PHP

Question

I want to check how many instances of the letter "a" appears in a certain string. What is the function for this? I need it to return an integer value.

Answer 1

You can use the function : substr_count

Example:

$str = "I love stackoverflow";
echo substr_count($str,'o'); // prints 3

Answer 2

substr_count($haystack, $needle);

Answer 3

I suppose substr_count could do the trick ;-)

For example, this portion of code :

$str = 'abcdazerty';
echo substr_count($str, 'a');

would get you the following output :

2

And, quoting :

int substr_count  (  string $haystack  ,  
    string $needle  [,  int $offset = 0  
    [,  int $length  ]] )

substr_count() returns the number of times the needle substring occurs in the haystack string. Please note that needle is case sensitive.

Answer 4

you can refer to PHP string functions manual to find any function you need, http://php.net/strings

Answer 5

substr_count is probably the most straightforward. you can also do this

$str = "I love stackovaerflowa";
print count(explode("a",$str))-1;