Question

I’m trying to use strlen or something like that to count multiple set of characters
in a string.
Here’s the database string

xa1xb2xcxd3xe4xcxa5xb6xcxd7xe8xcxa9xb10xcxd11xe12xcxa13xb14xc

I get the string from the database and i want to count the number of

“xa” “xb” “xd” and “xe” that the string contains.

I Guess i could count first xa then xb then xd then xe with strlen and then adding the numbers but isn’t there an easier way?

Please help!

Answer 1

Are you open to preg_match_all solution?

echo preg_match_all('/x(a|b|d|e)/', $message, $matches)

From the docs:

Returns the number of full pattern matches (which might be zero), or
FALSE if an error occurred.

Although this returns the aggregated number of xa,xb,xd and xe, not the individual ones

If you need to get individual ones, you need one more step with array_count_values:

$sums = array_count_values($matches[0]);
print_r($sums);