You might be able to shorten this, but this seems to work ok... $x = ':B000:W000:M260:8:'; @y = $x =~ /:8:/g; print scalar(@y);
@y will contain the matches, one for each element of the array. Grabbing the array in scalar context will get you the count of the matches. ...There is probably a faster way though, one that won't require building the @y array. Rob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 2:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: COunting the number of times a string matches in another string Hi! Maybe this is really easy, but hey, I'm a beginner with Perl. I'm trying to count the number of times a string is contained inside another string. Here's a sample of my data, a set of colon-delimited values from the Perl Soundex function, with a few pure numbers or letters mixed in. A sample candidate string: :B000:W000:M260:8: For each colon-delimited substring, such as :M260:, I want a count of how many times it's found in each target string. Some sample target strings: :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:8: <-bare numbers are possible, like this :8: :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:8: :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:24:E214: :L520:T400:C000:S000:M:24:E214: <-note the :M: string, just for variety :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:14:E214: :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:14:E214: :L520:M260:C000:S000:L200:14:E214: <-this should match once :L520:T400:M260:S000:M260:14:E214: <-this should match twice :L520:T400:C000:S000:L200:14:E214: I tried the longhand approach using arrays to compare each colon-delimited substring of the candidate string to all the substrings in the targets and that's way too slow. Since I only need to know how many times each string is contained inside the target string, I thought substring matches might do it in one operation -- but I don't know how to count the number of matches. I hope somebody out there does -- or knows an even better way. Thanks, Scott Scott E. Robinson SWAT Team UTC Onsite User Support RR-690 -- 281-654-5169 EMB-2813N -- 713-656-3629 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
