count number of fields in the string

[pho01]

What shell/unix command can I use to count the number of fields in a string variable based on a string delimiter?

For example:
count_str="DB_ANSWER_DATA 52428800 50528256 96.375 10420224 5"

The output is varied, in this case, count_num variable would return 6. and the delimiter is ' '

Thanks,

 

[pete91z]

using any combination of awk, cut, sed and wc should be able to give you this information.

 

[Ygor]

Try..
[tt]
echo $count_str | awk -F ' ' '{print NF}' | read count_num
[/tt]

 

[jxmac18]

Try:

echo STRING | awk '{print NF}'

NF is the number of fields, if you want to change the field separator, try

echo STRING | awk '{FS=":"; print NF}'


--
Jack