count specific word in line in bash

Question

i have variable such as "1,2,3,4"

i want to count of commas in this text in bash

any idea ?

thanks for help

Answer 1

Isolate commas per line, count lines:

echo "$VAR"|grep -o ,|wc -l

Answer 2

This will do what you want:

echo "1,2,3" | tr -cd ',' | wc -c

Answer 3

Off the top of my head using pure bash:

var="1,2,3,4"
temp=${var//[^,]/}
echo ${#temp}

Answer 4

A purely bash solution with no external programs:

$ X=1,2,3,4
$ count=$(( $(IFS=,; set -- $X; echo $#) - 1 ))
$ echo $count
3
$

Note: This destroys your positional parameters.

Answer 5

Another pure Bash solution:

var="bbb,1,2,3,4,a,b,qwerty,,,"
saveIFS="$IFS"
IFS=','
var=($var)x
IFS="$saveIFS"
echo $((${#var[@]} - 1))

will output "10" with the string shown.

Answer 6

very simply with awk

$ echo 1,2,3,4 | awk -F"," '{print NF-1}'
3

with just the shell

$ s="1,2,3,4"
$ IFS=","
$ set -- $s
$ echo $(($#-1))
3