`count`

Counts how many times a piece of text or pattern occurs.

Category: Language Fundamentals > Data Types

Syntax

n = count(str, pat)

Number of non-overlapping occurrences of pat in str.

n = count(str, pat, 'IgnoreCase', true)

Ignores letter case.

Description

Matching scans left to right and each match consumes its characters, so count('aaa', 'aa') is 1, not 2. A search in empty text gives 0. Compare with contains, which only tells whether there is at least one occurrence.

Input arguments

str: Character vector, string array or cell array of character vectors.
pat: Text or pattern object.
'IgnoreCase': Logical, default false.

Output arguments

n: Array with the size of str; each element is a count.

Example

Occurrences

count('banana', 'an')
count(["banana" "ab"], 'a')
count('Banana', 'a', 'IgnoreCase', true)

Output

ans = 2
ans = 1×2

     3     1
ans = 3

count