character count function

[HandersonVA]

can anyone help me find how many "|" in the string? does coldfusion has the function for it?
<cfset variables.teststring = "343|4w3|||jenny||sfsdfsd">
thank you!

[Newsgroup_User]

HandersonVA wrote:
> can anyone help me find how many "|" in the string? does coldfusion has the function for it?
> <cfset variables.teststring = "343|4w3|||jenny||sfsdfsd">
> thank you!

Not built in, but this popped into my head.

<cfset variables.pipes = len(rereplace(variables.teststring,"^|","","ALL"))>

[paross1 · Accepted solution]

Ian, you did a slight oops, but otherwise I think that it is a good solution, since ^| only means NOT | if it is enclosed in [ ] brackets. Without them ^ means start of line.

Phil

[Newsgroup_User]

paross1 wrote:
> Ian, you did a slight oops, but otherwise I think that it is a good
> solution....
>
> <cfset variables.pipes = len(rereplace(variables.teststring,"^|","","ALL"))>
> should actually be
> <cfset variables.pipes = len(rereplace(variables.teststring,"[^|]","","ALL"))>
>
> Since ^| only means NOT | if it is enclosed itn [ ] brackets.
>
> Phil
>
That's what I get for typing my code into an e-mail editor. The
'debugger' sucks! :-)

Thanks for the correction.

[Guest]

You cannot use the ListLen( ) function without taking care of the consecutive occurrences of "|". The code below should give you what you want.

[paross1]

Problem... you are counting one too many "pipes"... there are actually only 6 | characters, but your example gives a count of 7, since you are actually counting list elements with the | being the delimiter, and there is actually one more element than delimiter. Plus, you get into trouble if the | is the first or last character in the string, etc.

Phil