Checking within a string

[idiotboy]

Hi,

I have a string e.g.

idiotboy|is|trying|to|count|how|many|pipes|are|in|this|string|

How can I count how many pipes there are in the string?

grep only returns the string itself

I can
While read pipe|;do tr -s "|" "|\n" $pipe|wc -l;done
but I thought there might be another way which is perhaps more efficient?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

 

[Ygor]

Here's two possible ways...
[tt] echo $pipe | awk '{print gsub("\|","")}'[/tt]
...or...
[tt] echo $pipe | tr -dc '|' | wc -c[/tt]

 

[PHV]

Some homework ?
The original reply to the same question is here:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?SQID=836172&SPID=822&newpid=822&page=1

 

[idiotboy]

Homework? Not for at least 20 years.

Thanks to both of you. I was a bit surprised that there isn't a more elegant solution.

As I proposed, my method works, I just wondered if it could be done better.

Thanks for the help and the link to the post.

Cheers,

Chris