PHP substr_count() Function

Example

Count the number of times "world" occurs in the string:

<?php
echo substr_count("Hello world. The world is nice","world");
?>

The substr_count() function counts the number of times a substring occurs in a string.

Note: The substring is case-sensitive.

Note: This function does not count overlapped substrings (see example 2).

Note: This function generates a warning if the start parameter plus the length parameter is greater than the string length (see example 3).

Syntax

substr_count(string,substring,start,length)

Parameter Values

Parameter	Description
string	Required. Specifies the string to check
substring	Required. Specifies the string to search for
start	Optional. Specifies where in string to start searching. If negative, it starts counting from the end of the string
length	Optional. Specifies the length of the search

Technical Details

Return Value:	Returns the the number of times the substring occurs in the string
PHP Version:	4+
Changelog:	PHP 7.1 - The length parameters can be 0 or a negative number. PHP 7.1 - The start parameters can be a negative number. PHP 5.1 - The start and length parameters were added.

More Examples

Example

Using all parameters:

<?php
$str = "This is nice";
echo strlen($str)." "; // Using strlen() to return the string length
echo substr_count($str,"is")." "; // The number of times "is" occurs in the string
echo substr_count($str,"is",2)." "; // The string is now reduced to "is is nice"
echo substr_count($str,"is",3)." "; // The string is now reduced to "s is nice"
echo substr_count($str,"is",3,3)." "; // The string is now reduced to "s i"
?>

Try it Yourself »

Example

Overlapped substrings:

<?php
$str = "abcabcab";
echo substr_count($str,"abcab"); // This function does not count overlapped substrings
?>

Try it Yourself »

Example

If the start and length parameters exceeds the string length, this function will output a warning:

<?php
echo $str = "This is nice";
substr_count($str,"is",3,9);
?>

This will output a warning because the length value exceeds the string length (3+9 is greater than 12)

❮ PHP String Reference