How to count string occurrence in string?

/** Function that count occurrences of a substring in a string;
 * @param {String} string               The string
 * @param {String} subString            The sub string to search for
 * @param {Boolean} [allowOverlapping]  Optional. (Default:false)
 *
 * @author Vitim.us https://gist.github.com/victornpb/7736865
 * @see Unit Test https://jsfiddle.net/Victornpb/5axuh96u/
 * @see https://stackoverflow.com/a/7924240/938822
 */
function occurrences(string, subString, allowOverlapping) {

    string += "";
    subString += "";
    if (subString.length <= 0) return (string.length + 1);

    var n = 0,
        pos = 0,
        step = allowOverlapping ? 1 : subString.length;

    while (true) {
        pos = string.indexOf(subString, pos);
        if (pos >= 0) {
            ++n;
            pos += step;
        } else break;
    }
    return n;
}

Usage

occurrences("foofoofoo", "bar"); //0

occurrences("foofoofoo", "foo"); //3

occurrences("foofoofoo", "foofoo"); //1

allowOverlapping

occurrences("foofoofoo", "foofoo", true); //2

Matches:

  foofoofoo
1 `----´
2    `----´

Unit Test

• https://jsfiddle.net/Victornpb/5axuh96u/

Benchmark

I've made a benchmark test and my function is more then 10 times faster then the regexp match function posted by gumbo. In my test string is 25 chars length. with 2 occurences of the character 'o'. I executed 1 000 000 times in Safari.

Safari 5.1

Benchmark> Total time execution: 5617 ms (regexp)

Benchmark> Total time execution: 881 ms (my function 6.4x faster)

Firefox 4

Benchmark> Total time execution: 8547 ms (Rexexp)

Benchmark> Total time execution: 634 ms (my function 13.5x faster)

---

Edit: changes I've made

• cached substring length

• added type-casting to string.

• added optional 'allowOverlapping' parameter

• fixed correct output for "" empty substring case.

Gist

• https://gist.github.com/victornpb/7736865

function countInstances(string, word) {
   return string.split(word).length - 1;
}
console.log(countInstances("This is a string", "is"))

The g in the regular expression (short for global) says to search the whole string rather than just find the first occurrence. This matches is twice:

var temp = "This is a string.";
var count = (temp.match(/is/g) || []).length;
console.log(count);

And, if there are no matches, it returns 0:

var temp = "Hello World!";
var count = (temp.match(/is/g) || []).length;
console.log(count);