How can I create a for loop to count letters in a sequence?

i have the following sequence

a = b c d b c d e c c d b c b e e

i want to create a for loop to identify the number of b’s and c’s in the sequence?

help please

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

No loops needed:

a = 'b c d b c d e c c d b c b e e'
no_of_bs=sum(ismember(a,'b'))
no_of_cs=sum(ismember(a,'c'))

[Guillaume]

You're overcomplicating:

no_of_bs = sum(a == 'b')
no_of_cs = sum(a == 'c')

Instead of sum you can use nnz (which will work even if a is a matrix, whereas with sum you'd have to specify 'all' (R2018b) or reshape into a vector):

no_of_bs = nnz(a == 'b')
no_of_cs = nnz(a == 'c')

[madhan ravi]

Thanks Guillaume , what was I thinking , you are absolutely right!

[Fope Ayo]

thanks for this, but ive just realised that I need a for loop because I am then going to use the loop to count a different character in the sequence.

i understand that i dont necessarily need one, but is there a way to create a for loop that loops through a and counts the numebr of b’s?

thanks so much