Golang : How to count the number of repeated characters in a string?

Problem :

You want to develop a new algorithm that somehow will reduce or compress the size of a string significantly. In order to do that you need to determine how many characters are repeated in a string. How to count the number of repeated characters?

Solution :

Use the strings.Count() function to find out the number of repeated characters.

For example :

 package main

 import (
  "fmt"
  "strings"
 )

 func main() {
  str := "a long string with many repeated characters"
  numberOfa := strings.Count(str, "a")

  fmt.Printf("[%v] string has %d of characters of [a] ", str, numberOfa)

 }

Output :

[a long string with many repeated characters] string has 5 of characters of [a]

Reference :

http://golang.org/pkg/strings/#Count