PHP3 help- find a string and count

[Anon]

I am trying to match a pattern in a variable and count how many times the pattern appeared in the variable.
I am using PHP3

$var1=string;
$var2="there is a string here and a string there";

some functions.....

output = 2 //the value string from var1 appeared twice in var2...

any help will be greatly appreciated

[Anon]

check out the string in string function

[Anon]

I have tried the strstr function.
It outputs from the string I am trying to match to the end of line

$var3 = strstr($sentence, $string);

where $sentence for example is abc def ghi def
and $string is def

echo $var3
def ghi def

I guess what I thinking is implement a loop with a counter
I'm just not quite sure how to start as it looks like I will have keep passing the output of the strstr function back into itself...

any suggestions....please.....

[staffanolin]

I have made a function for this.
Don't know how fast it is, but it works.

function CountStringsInString($heystack, $needle)
{
$count = 0;

$position = strpos($heystack, $needle);
while($position > 0)
{
	$count++;
	$position = strpos($heystack, $needle, $position+1);
}

return $count;

}

/Staffan

[Anon]

Thanx Staffan!!!!!
It worked and saved a lot of frustration...
As I am new to PHP the help is very greatly appreciated...