How to keep count in a recursive function?

Question

I wrote a recursive function to find the number of instances of a substring in the parent string.

The way I am keeping count is by declaring/initialising count

Answer 1

Taking into account overlapping occurrences and maintaining the original definition from MIT this is the simpler and more compact code that I can get.

code:

from string import *
def countSubStringMatchRecursive(target, key):
    index = find(target, key)
    if index > -1:
        return countSubStringMatchRecursive(target[index + 1:], key) + 1
    return 0


def test(target, key):
    instances = countSubStringMatchRecursive(target, key)
    if instances == 0:
        print "No instance of %r in %r" % (key, target)
    else:
        print "Number of instances of %r in %r: %d" % (key, target, instances)

test("atgacatgcacaagtatgcat","ggcc")
test("atgacatgcacaagtatgcat","atgc")
test("banana", "ana")

output:

No instance of 'ggcc' in 'atgacatgcacaagtatgcat'

Number of instances of 'atgc' in 'atgacatgcacaagtatgcat': 2

Number of instances of 'ana' in 'banana': 2