Well, I have a string that is 76 characters long and it is made up of random letters from a to e. I would like to use something like instr to tell me how many times "a" apears, "b", etc. I can see how to do a brute-force sort of thing, but I hate to miss out on some beautifully-compact method.
thanks
h

I believe the following would be quicker (although... the replace() command does return the number of letters replaced)

Dim sTmp As String     Dim i As Integer     Dim r As Integer     Dim ac As Integer     Dim bc As Integer     Dim cc As Integer     Dim dc As Integer     Dim ec As Integer      ' Just to populate the variable, not used by you '    For i = 0 To 75 '        r = CInt(Rnd() * 5 + 1)          '        sTmp = sTmp & Chr(r + 64) '    Next ' End of unused code          For i = 1 To Len(sTmp)         Select Case UCase(Mid(sTmp, i, 1))         Case "A"             ac = ac + 1         Case "B"             bc = bc + 1         Case "C"             cc = cc + 1         Case "D"             dc = dc + 1         Case "E"             ec = ec + 1         End Select     Next          MsgBox sTmp & vbCrLf & "A=" & ac & ", B=" & bc & ", CB=" & cc & ", D=" & dc & ", E=" & ec ' or, although could be slower a tad     Replace sTmp, "A", "", , ac, vbTextCompare     Replace sTmp, "B", "", , bc, vbTextCompare     Replace sTmp, "C", "", , cc, vbTextCompare     Replace sTmp, "D", "", , dc, vbTextCompare     Replace sTmp, "E", "", , ec, vbTextCompare          MsgBox sTmp & vbCrLf & "A=" & ac & ", B=" & bc & ", CB=" & cc & ", D=" & dc & ", E=" & ec

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