CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringpowershell
JBurace
JBurace

Reputation: 5633

Count number of strings within a string?

How would you go about counting the number of strings within a string using Powershell?

For example:

$a = "blah test <= goes here / blah test <= goes here / blah blah"

I want to count how many times <= goes here / appears in the above.

Upvotes: 25

Views: 65026

Answers (9)

crisc2000
crisc2000

Reputation: 1222

another solution with Select-String

$a = "blah test <= goes here / blah test <= goes here / blah blah"

($a | Select-String -Pattern "<= goes here /" -AllMatches).Matches.Count

Select-String docs:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/select-string

Upvotes: 6

Southernal
Southernal

Reputation: 167

Not the best solution but practical:

$a.Replace("<= goes here /","♀").Split("♀").Count

Make sure that your text does not contain "♀" character.

Upvotes: 1

YenForYang
YenForYang

Reputation: 3284

I'm surprised no one mentioned the -split operator.

For a case-sensitive match, opt for the -cSplit operator as -split/-iSplit are both case-insensitive.

PS Y:\Power> $a = "blah test <= goes here / blah test <= goes here / blah blah"

# $a -cSplit <Delimiter>[,<Max-substrings>[,"<Options>"]]
# Default is RegexMatch (makes no difference here):
PS Y:\Power> ($a -cSplit '<= goes here /').Count - 1
2

# Using 'SimpleMatch' (the 0 means return no limit or return all)
PS Y:\Power> ($a -cSplit '<= goes here/',0,'simplematch').Count - 1
2

Upvotes: 2

Stoinov
Stoinov

Reputation: 792

Yet another alternative one liner: (Select-String "_" -InputObject $a -AllMatches).Matches.Count

Upvotes: 4

Charlie K
Charlie K

Reputation: 114

Just to expand on BeastianSTI' excellent answer:

Finding the maximum number of separators used in a line of a file (line unknown at run time):

$myNewCount = 0
foreach ($line in [System.IO.File]::ReadLines("Filename")){
    $fields = $line.Split("*").GetUpperBound(0);
    If ($fields -gt $myNewCount)
    {$myNewCount = $fields}
}

Upvotes: 1

BeastianSTi
BeastianSTi

Reputation: 605

I had a string with a bunch of pipes in it. I wanted to know how many there were, so I used this to get it. Just another way :)

$ExampleVar = "one|two|three|four|fivefive|six|seven";
$Occurrences = $ExampleVar.Split("|").GetUpperBound(0);
Write-Output "I've found $Occurrences pipe(s) in your string, sir!";
  • Marcus

Upvotes: 8

CB.
CB.

Reputation: 60918

another way (similar to @mjolinor way) in one line:

([regex]::Matches($a, "<= goes here /" )).count

Upvotes: 43

mjolinor
mjolinor

Reputation: 68273

Using regex:

$a = "blah test <= goes here / blah test <= goes here / blah blah"
[regex]$regex = '<= goes here /'
$regex.matches($a).count
2

Upvotes: 8

zdan
zdan

Reputation: 29450

You can use the [.NET String.Split][1] method overload that takes an array of string objects and then count how many splits you get. 

($a.Split([string[]]@('<= goes here /'),[StringSplitOptions]"None")).Count - 1

Note that you have to cast the string your searching for to a string array to make sure you get the correct Split overload and then subtract 1 from the result because split will return all the strings that surround your search string. Also important is the "None" option that will cause Split to return null strings in the array (that you can count) if your search string returns at the start or end.

Upvotes: 3

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