Count the number of occurrences of a character in a string in Javascript

Question

I need to count the number of occurrences of a character in a string.

For example, suppose my string contains:

var mainStr = \"str1,str2,str3,str4\";         


        

Answer 1

The following uses a regular expression to test the length. testex ensures you don't have 16 or greater consecutive non-comma characters. If it passes the test, then it proceeds to split the string. counting the commas is as simple as counting the tokens minus one.

var mainStr = "str1,str2,str3,str4";
var testregex = /([^,]{16,})/g;
if (testregex.test(mainStr)) {
  alert("values must be separated by commas and each may not exceed 15 characters");
} else {
  var strs = mainStr.split(',');
  alert("mainStr contains " + strs.length + " substrings separated by commas.");
  alert("mainStr contains " + (strs.length-1) + " commas.");
}