how to find the number of occurrences of a substring within a string vb.net

Question

I have a string (for example: "Hello there. My name is John. I work very hard. Hello there!") and I am trying to find the number of occurrences of the string "hello there". So far, this is the code I have:

Dim input as String = "Hello there. My name is John. I work very hard. Hello there!"
Dim phrase as String = "hello there"
Dim Occurrences As Integer = 0

If input.toLower.Contains(phrase) = True Then
    Occurrences = input.Split(phrase).Length      
    'REM: Do stuff
End If

Unfortunately, what this line of code seems to do is split the string every time it sees the first letter of phrase, in this case, h. So instead of the result Occurrences = 2 that I would hope for, I actually get a much larger number. I know that counting the number of splits in a string is a horrible way to go about doing this, even if I did get the correct answer, so could someone please help me out and provide some assistance?

Answer 1

Yet another idea:

Dim input As String = "Hello there. My name is John. I work very hard. Hello there!"
Dim phrase As String = "Hello there"
Dim Occurrences As Integer = (input.Length - input.Replace(phrase, String.Empty).Length) / phrase.Length

You just need to make sure that phrase.Length > 0.

Answer 2

the best way to do it is this:

Public Function countString(ByVal inputString As String, ByVal stringToBeSearchedInsideTheInputString as String) As Integer
    Return System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Split(inputString, stringToBeSearchedInsideTheInputString).Length -1

End Function