How about: sum(unlist(strsplit(b,NULL))==";") # [1] 5
(More transparent, at least to me ... ). See '?strsplit', and note what is said under "Value". Ted. On 11-Oct-10 04:35:43, Michael Sumner wrote: > Literally: > > length( gregexpr(";", b)[[1]]) > > But more generally, in case b has more than one element: > > sapply(gregexpr(";", b), length) > > ?gregexpr > > > > On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Santosh Srinivas < > santosh.srini...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> New to R ... which is a function to most effectively search the number >> of >> occurrences of a character in a string? >> >> b <- >> c("jkhrikujhj345hi5hiklfjsdkljfksdio324j';;'lfd;g'lkfit34'5;435l;43'5k" >> ) >> >> I want the number of semi-colons ";" in b? >> Thanks. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Oct-10 Time: 09:20:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.