How Does Python\'s `string.count` Function Count Substring Occurrences?

Counting Substring Occurrences within a String in Python

Finding the frequency of a specific substring within a given string is a common task in programming. Python offers a straightforward method for counting these occurrences using the in-built string.count function.

How to Use string.count

The string.count function takes two arguments: the string to be searched and the substring to be counted. It returns an integer representing the number of times the substring appears in the string.

For instance:

>>> "foo bar foo".count("foo")
2

In this example, the count function identifies two occurrences of the substring "foo" within the string "foo bar foo" and returns 2.

Overlapping Occurrences

The string.count function counts non-overlapping occurrences of a substring by default. This means that it will only count occurrences where the substring is separated by other characters.

For example:

>>> "abc".count("a")
1

In this case, the letter "a" appears twice in the string "abc," but string.count only counts it once because the two occurrences overlap.

If you need to count overlapping occurrences, you will need to use a different approach, such as iterating through the string and checking each substring.

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