Is their anyway to count the number of occurrences of a string within another string? I tried using the count command but I get the error 'Access not allowed'. And I tried using Akua Sweets 'collect items of --that match' command but I couldn't get it to work.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Paul Crawford]

Hi:

Try one of the regular-expression parser OSAXen available via ScriptWeb's Osaxen scripting-additions library or the AppleScript Sourcebook's Scripting Additions, Add-Ons & Plug-Ins links page.

For example, Leonard Rosenthol's RegEx Commands OSAX lets you do something like this:-

Code:
set matchResult to (REMatch {"abcabcabcabcabc"} pattern "abc" using "*" separator "." with ignoreCase)  -- returns '{*.*.*.*.*}'
set numMatches to ((count matchResult) - ((count matchResult) div 2))  -- returns 5

Regards,

--Paul