try this! I don't know how effective is preg_replace w/ huge memory contents....but this should work fine! $mem = "an arc is an archer, arc but what about marc and darcy?"; $match = "arc"; $count = 0; preg_replace("/\b$match\b/ie", "\$count++;", $mem); echo $count; "Richard Baskett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > I just can not seem to figure this out. > > If i have a pattern 'arc' and I want to search the string: > "an arc is an archer, but what about marc and darcy?" > > How can I find out how many occurances of arc is within that string? I know > I can do an explode and then compare it, but when you have huge amounts of > text... is this the best way? Or is there something better? Any help would > be great I have been struggling with this for awhile, since I really do not > want to explode, pun intended :) > > Rick > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]