count_chars

• There is no direct equivalent to count information about characters within a string, but we can achieve similar results using:

  1. String#split the string on each character
  2. Array#inject to build a hash based on the occurrence of characters

  PHP

  $result = count_chars("test", 1);
  var_export($result);
  // => array(101 => 1, 115 => 1, 116 => 2)

  Ruby

  # direct equivalent
  result = "test".split("").inject({}) do |hash, val|
    hash[val[0]] = hash[val[0]].to_i + 1
    hash
  end
  p result
  # => {115=>1, 116=>2, 101=>1}

  If all we need is know how many times a specific character occurs within the string:

  PHP

  $chars = count_chars("hello world", 1); 
  print $chars[ord('l')];
  // => 3

  Ruby

  # number of times a single char occurs
  puts "hello world".scan("l").length
  # => 3

  see also

  • strpos
  • substr_count

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