Master PHP’s substr_count(): Count Substring Occurrences Easily

In PHP, the substr_count() function is used to count how many times a substring appears within a string, which is especially handy for statistical text analysis.

substr_count() function syntax

int substr_count ( string $string , string $substring [, int $start = 0 [, int $length ]] )

$string

: the string to be examined; $sub: the substring to look for; $start: the position to start checking, default 0; $length: the length to check, default the whole string.

Below is a concrete example demonstrating how to use substr_count() to count the occurrences of a substring in a string.

<?php

// Count occurrences of a substring in a string
$string = "Hello world, Hello PHP, Hello substr_count!";
$sub = "Hello";
$count = substr_count($string, $sub);

// Output the result
echo "The substring \"{$sub}\" appears {$count} times.";
?>

The example assigns the target string to $string and the substring to $sub, then calls substr_count() to compute the count, storing it in $count. The echo statement prints the number of occurrences, which in this case is 3.

The substr_count() function can also be applied in more complex scenarios, such as counting keyword occurrences in user‑entered text within a text editor.

Overall, substr_count() provides a concise way to obtain substring occurrence counts, simplifying many string‑related statistical tasks in PHP.