count subset of chars in a line

[GrandFather]

Count all occurrences of characters from a given set in a string.

In the code below $CharSet is the set of characters to count. $SearchStr is the string to count them in.

my $Set = qr/[^$CharSet]/;
length join "", split $Set, $SearchStr;

Wrapped up in a rather more general sub:

sub CountSetChars
  {
  my $Count;
  my $CharSet = shift;
  my $Set = qr/[^$CharSet]/;
  my $Param;

  while ($Param = shift)
    {
    if (defined @$Param)
      {map {$Count += CountSetChars ($CharSet, $_)} @$Param;}
    elsif (ref $Param)
      {$Count += length join "", split $Set, @$Param;}
    else
      {$Count += length join "", split $Set, $Param;}
    }
  return $Count;
  }

[Zaxo]

There's a very pretty way to count them with the tr// operator, my $vowel_count = tr/AEIOUYaeiouy//; If you want the character list in a variable, you need to string-eval:  my $foo_count = eval "tr/$foo//";

[GrandFather]

Argh, I knew I'd seen a tidy way to do it somewhere. Sorting out the parameter handling for the sub was good exercise though :-).