SQL function to get count of how many times string appears in column?

Question

Is there a function for MySQL that will count the number of times a string occurs in another string or column? Basically I want:

SELECT
    SUB_COUNT(\'my wo         


        

Answer 1

I just needed to do something similar, but took a different approach. I copied the relevant string into a temp table where I can add columns to track an index through each occurrence on each row.

In my example, I'm looking for substrings " - " (space-dash-space) in product descriptions, with the intent of eventually chopping those apart to show as bullet points, and I'm analyzing the data like this to see how many "bullets" products typically have.

I suspect this is more efficient than repeatedly re-writing string values, but I haven't actually benchmarked.

SELECT 
        ccp.ProductID, p.ProductDescription, descrlen=LEN(p.ProductDescription), 
        bulletcnt=0, indx=0, lastmatchat=0
    INTO #DescrBullets
    FROM Private.CompositeCatalogProduct AS ccp WITH(NOLOCK) 
    INNER JOIN Products.Product AS p WITH(NOLOCK) ON p.ProductId = ccp.ProductID
    WHERE ccp.CompositeCatalogID=53


DECLARE @rows INT = 1
WHILE @rows>0
BEGIN 

-- find the next occurrence on each row that's still in play
UPDATE #DescrBullets
    SET lastmatchat = PATINDEX('% - %',RIGHT(ProductDescription,descrlen-indx))
    WHERE indx0
SET @rows = @@ROWCOUNT

-- for all the ones that didn't have a match, advance indx past the end
-- so we don't need to reprocess on next iterations
UPDATE #DescrBullets
    SET indx=descrlen
    WHERE lastmatchat=0

RAISERROR('processing, %d products still have bullets', 0, 1, @rows) WITH NOWAIT

END 

SELECT db.bulletcnt, occurs=COUNT(*)
    FROM #DescrBullets AS db
    GROUP BY db.bulletcnt
    ORDER BY 1