Obatining the number of occurences of a particular character within a string can be easily obtained using the PHP command substr_count along with the 4D command PHP EXECUTE.

Create the following project method saved as UTIL_HowMany:

// UTIL_HowMany C_TEXT($1) // input C_TEXT($2) // count this C_LONGINT($0) If (Count parameters=2)    C_BOOLEAN($ok)    $ok:=PHP Execute("";"substr_count";$0;$1;$2) Else    $0:=0 End if

Once the project method is saved as UTIL_HowMany it can be used like this:

$a:="test, test, test" $b:="," $num:=UTIL_HowMany($a;$b)

The utility method could also be written using pure 4D commands like this:

// UTIL_HowMany C_TEXT($1) // input C_TEXT($2) // count this C_LONGINT($0) If (Count parameters=2)    $0:=(Length($1)-(Length(Replace string($1;$2;""))))/Length($2) Else    $0:=0 End if