PHP Count Specific Characters in String

In this tutorial, you will learn how to count specific characters in a string or repeated characters in a string PHP.

How to count specific characters string in PHP

Use PHP function substr_count() function to count specific characters in a string or count repeated in a string PHP:

PHP substr_count() Function

The substr_count() function is an inbuilt PHP function that can be used to counts the number of times a substring occurs in a string.

Here is syntax:

The basic syntax of substr_count() is:

substr_count(string,substring,start,length)

Parameter

Parameter	Description
string	It’s required. Where find occurrences of a substring in a string PHP
substring	It is necessary. This is a string that will be searched in the original string
start	Optional. Specifies where in string to start searching. If negative, it starts counting from the end of the string
length	Optional. Specifies the length of the search

Here are some examples of count specific characters in string:

1. count specific characters in a string

Suppose we have one string “php count specific characters in string php”, in this string we will count the number of times “php” occurs in string.

Let’s take an example to the count the characters or words in a string.

<?php
$string = "php count specific characters in string php";
echo 'output is :- '.substr_count($string,"php");
?>

Output

The output of the above example 1 is given below

 output is :-2

2. find all occurrences of a substring in a string PHP

To find all occurrences of a substring in string PHP. You can see the below example for that:

<?php
// PHP program to count number of times
// sub-string appears in original string.

$originalStr = "how to count sub-string in string PHP";
$subString = "string";

$res = substr_count($originalStr, $subString);

echo($res);
?> 

Output

The output of the above example is given below

 output is :-2

3. count number of character occurrences in a string in PHP without using function PHP

<?php
$text="php - count number of character occurrences in a string in PHP without using function php";
$searchchar="php";
$count="0"; //zero
for($i="0"; $i<strlen($text); $i=$i+1){

    $str = explode(' ', $text);
    if($str[$i] == $searchchar){

       $count=$count+1;
    }
}
echo $count
?>

Output

The output of the above example is:

  output is :-2 

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned how to count substring in string PHP by using substr_count and without using substr_count() function in PHP.

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