How to Use StringUtil class to find the number of times a character/string/int occured in a String?

[Gaurav Pravin Dighe]

Hi,
want to find how many times "a" appeared in String aahhsjhglahfagha".
I have found a StringUtils class in org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils. I want to use it.

Below are the description of StringUtils:

public class StringUtils
extends Object

Operations on String that are null safe.

IsEmpty/IsBlank - checks if a String contains text
Trim/Strip - removes leading and trailing whitespace
Equals - compares two strings null-safe
startsWith - check if a String starts with a prefix null-safe
endsWith - check if a String ends with a suffix null-safe
IndexOf/LastIndexOf/Contains - null-safe index-of checks
IndexOfAny/LastIndexOfAny/IndexOfAnyBut/LastIndexOfAnyBut - index-of any of a set of Strings
ContainsOnly/ContainsNone/ContainsAny - does String contains only/none/any of these characters
Substring/Left/Right/Mid - null-safe substring extractions
SubstringBefore/SubstringAfter/SubstringBetween - substring extraction relative to other strings
Split/Join - splits a String into an array of substrings and vice versa
Remove/Delete - removes part of a String
Replace/Overlay - Searches a String and replaces one String with another
Chomp/Chop - removes the last part of a String
LeftPad/RightPad/Center/Repeat - pads a String
UpperCase/LowerCase/SwapCase/Capitalize/Uncapitalize - changes the case of a String
CountMatches - counts the number of occurrences of one String in another
IsAlpha/IsNumeric/IsWhitespace/IsAsciiPrintable - checks the characters in a String
DefaultString - protects against a null input String
Reverse/ReverseDelimited - reverses a String
Abbreviate - abbreviates a string using ellipsis
Difference - compares Strings and reports on their differences
LevensteinDistance - the number of changes needed to change one String into another

The StringUtils class defines certain words related to String handling.

null - null
empty - a zero-length string ("")
space - the space character (' ', char 32)
whitespace - the characters defined by Character.isWhitespace(char)
trim - the characters <= 32 as in String.trim()

StringUtils handles null input Strings quietly. That is to say that a null input will return null. Where a boolean or int is being returned details vary by method.

A side effect of the null handling is that a NullPointerException should be considered a bug in StringUtils (except for deprecated methods).

Methods in this class give sample code to explain their operation. The symbol * is used to indicate any input including null.


If i go in normal way i would have to write the program like this

public class CountMatch{
	public static void main(String[] args){
		int count = countChars('a',"abcabcabcabcaa");
		System.out.println("Count of a in abcabcabcabcaa = "+ count);
	}
	public static int countChars(char c, String s) {
  		int result = 0;
  		for (int i = 0, n = s.length(); i < n; i++) {
    			if (s.charAt(i) == c) {
      				result++;
    			}
  		}
  		return result;
	}
		
}

With StringUtils class countMatches() method the above task can be accomplished.

public static int countMatches(String str,
String sub)

Counts how many times the sub string appears in the larger String.


when i tried to use it i am not able to compile my program. Below is the code.

public class CountMatch{
	public static void main(String[] args){
		int count = StringUtils.countMatches("abcabcabcabcaa", "a");
		System.out.println("Count = " + count);
	}		
}

Please suggest what can be done?