[ale] Bash script question

[Geoffrey]

Just threw this together, tested it for a few seconds, seems to work:

awk -F',' 'BEGIN {count=0;}
{if (NF == 0) {next;}; count= count + NF - 1}
END {print count}'

Test a bit before you take my word.  Pass the character you want to 
count as the field delimiter (-F',').  Then, any line that contains one 
or more of the character will have one field more then the number of 
that character.  This will work even if the character is the only 
character on the line.  If the number of fields is 0, don't adjust the 
count.

Bob Kruger wrote:
> Is there a utility that I can run from bash that I can use to determine 
> the number of times a certain character appears in a line?
> 
> Example - I want to determine the number of times a comma (,) appears in 
> the line:
> 
> Field1,Field2,Field3,
>
> Yes, it can be done from Perl, but I would like to do this from bash.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
> 
> Bob
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> 
> 

-- 
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net

The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
Think about it...

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