Count the number of occurrences of a character in a string in Javascript

Question

I need to count the number of occurrences of a character in a string.

For example, suppose my string contains:

var mainStr = \"str1,str2,str3,str4\";         


        

Answer 1

I just did a very quick and dirty test on repl.it using Node v7.4. For a single character, the standard for loop is quickest:

Some code:

// winner!
function charCount1(s, c) {
    let count = 0;
    c = c.charAt(0); // we save some time here
    for(let i = 0; i < s.length; ++i) {
        if(c === s.charAt(i)) {
            ++count;
        }
    }
    return count;
}

function charCount2(s, c) {
    return (s.match(new RegExp(c[0], 'g')) || []).length;
}

function charCount3(s, c) {
    let count = 0;
    for(ch of s) {
        if(c === ch) {
            ++count;
        }
    }
    return count;
}

function perfIt() {
    const s = 'Hello, World!';
    const c = 'o';

    console.time('charCount1');
    for(let i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
        charCount1(s, c);
    }
    console.timeEnd('charCount1');
    
    console.time('charCount2');
    for(let i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
        charCount2(s, c);
    }
    console.timeEnd('charCount2');
    
    console.time('charCount3');
    for(let i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
        charCount2(s, c);
    }
    console.timeEnd('charCount3');
}

Results from a few runs:

 perfIt()
charCount1: 3.843ms
charCount2: 11.614ms
charCount3: 11.470ms
=> undefined
   perfIt()
charCount1: 3.006ms
charCount2: 8.193ms
charCount3: 7.941ms
=> undefined
   perfIt()
charCount1: 2.539ms
charCount2: 7.496ms
charCount3: 7.601ms
=> undefined
   perfIt()
charCount1: 2.654ms
charCount2: 7.540ms
charCount3: 7.424ms
=> undefined
   perfIt()
charCount1: 2.950ms
charCount2: 9.445ms
charCount3: 8.589ms

Update 2020-Oct-24: Still the case with Node.js 12 (play with it yourself here)