Is there an inbuilt command to do this or has anyone had any luck with a script that does it?
I am looking to count the number of times a certain string (not word) appears in a file. This can include multiple occurrences per line so the count should count every occurrence not just count 1 for lines that have the string 2 or more times.
For example, with this sample file:
blah(*)wasp( *)jkdjs(*)kdfks(l*)ffks(dl
flksj(*)gjkd(*
)jfhk(*)fj (*) ks)(*gfjk(*)
If I am looking to count the occurrences of the string (*) I would expect the count to be 6, i.e. 2 from the first line, 1 from the second line and 3 from the third line. Note how the one across lines 2-3 does not count because there is a LF character separating them.
Update: great responses so far! Can I ask that the script handle the conversion of (*) to \(*\), etc? That way I could just pass any desired string as an input parameter without worrying about what conversion needs to be done to it so it appears in the correct format.
Using perl's "Eskimo kiss" operator with the -n switch to print a total at the end. Use \Q...\E to ignore any meta characters.
perl -lnwe '$a+=()=/\Q(*)/g; }{ print $a;' file.txt
Script:
use strict;
use warnings;
my $count;
my $text = shift;
while (<>) {
$count += () = /\Q$text/g;
}
print "$count\n";
Usage:
perl script.pl "(*)" file.txt