COUNT Function

Counts the number of times that a specific substring of characters appears within a character string that you specify

Category: Character

Syntax

COUNT ( string,substring < ,modifiers >)

Arguments

string

• specifies a character constant, variable, or expression in which substrings are to be counted.

• Tip: Enclose a literal string of characters in quotation marks.

substring

• is a character constant, variable, or expression that specifies the substring of characters to count in string .

• Tip: Enclose a literal string of characters in quotation marks.

modifiers

• is a character constant, variable, or expression that specifies one or more modifiers. The following modifiers can be in uppercase or lowercase:

  i	ignores character case during the count. If this modifier is not specified, COUNT only counts character substrings with the same case as the characters in substring .
  t	trims trailing blanks from string and substring .

• Tip: If the modifier is a constant, enclose it in quotation marks. Specify multiple constants in a single set of quotation marks. Modifier can also be expressed as a variable or an expression that evaluates to one or more constants.

Details

The COUNT function searches string , from left to right, for the number of occurrences of the specified substring , and returns that number of occurrences. If the substring is not found in string , COUNT returns a value of 0.

CAUTION:

• If two occurrences of the specified substring overlap in the string, inconsistent results will be returned. For example, COUNT('boobooboo', 'booboo') might return either a 1 or a 2.

Comparisons

The COUNT function counts substrings of characters in a character string, whereas the COUNTC function counts individual characters in a character string.

Examples

The following SAS statements produce these results:

SAS Statements	Results
xyz='This is a thistle? Yes, this is a thistle.'; howmanythis=count(xyz,'this'); put howmanythis;	3
xyz='This is a thistle? Yes, this is a thistle.'; howmanyis=count(xyz,'is'); put howmanyis;	6
howmanythis_i=count('This is a thistle? Yes, this is a thistle.' ,'this','i'); put howmanythis_i;	4
variable1='This is a thistle? Yes, this is a thistle.'; variable2='is '; variable3='i'; howmanyis_i=count(variable1,variable2,variable3); put howmanyis_i;	4
expression1='This is a thistle? ''Yes, this is a thistle.'; expression2=kscan('This is',2)' '; expression3=compress('i '' t'); howmanyis_it=count(expression1,expression2,expression3); put howmanyis_it;	6

See Also

Functions:

• 'COUNTC Function' on page 470

• 'FIND Function' on page 533

• 'INDEX Function' on page 589

• 'RXMATCH Function' on page 799