counting number of times / appears in a string

Hello people,

I need to find out how many times the "/" character appears in a given string variable. For example:

myPath=./main/documents/test.txt

I need abit of code to tell me that $myPath has 3 "/" characters.

If this is possible could someone tell me how to do it or point me in the right direction.

Cheers mike

no *nix standard prog does it.
if you can write C or perl, it's a 5 lines code, when you get probls, post again

I propose a shell script solution:


:
A=/sss/ddd/sdfg
B=$( echo $A | tr -d "/" ) # String without slashes
LA=$( expr $A : '.*' ) # length of A
LB=$( expr $B : '.*' )
LEN=$( expr $LA - $LB )
echo $LEN


long, but it is a possibility. C or perl solution would be more elegant.

Regards

Here is a shorter version for ksh or bash:

:
A=/sss/ddd/sdfg
B=$( echo $A | tr -d "/" ) # String without slashes
let LEN=${#A}-${#B}
echo $LEN

and here two even shoter versions:

:
A=/sss/ddd/sdfg//

B=$(echo $A | sed 's/[^/]//g')
echo ${#B}

echo $A | awk '{print gsub("/", "")}'