Count occurrences of character per line/field on Unix

Question

Given a file with data like this (ie stores.dat file)

sid|storeNo|latitude|longitude
2tt|1|-28.0372000t0|153.42921670
9|2t|-33tt.85t09t0000|15t1.03274200
         


        

Answer 1

cat stores.dat | awk 'BEGIN {FS = "|"}; {print $1}' |  awk 'BEGIN {FS = "\t"}; {print NF}'

Where $1 would be a column number you want to count.