count number of occurences of character in string?

Is there a function/method for counting the number of times a specific character occurs in a string? Say

v = '30.44.532.56';

This is obviously nonesense, but I would like to check how many times the decimal point occurs so that I can reject if used with a function I wrote. This value would be input into GUIDE gui I am creating, so this is why it's in string format.

Answer 1

[Dharanee dharan Mani]

Try using

countnum= count(v,'.');

Answer 2

[Leor Greenberger]

I suppose this will actually work.

v = '30.44.532.56';
length(strfind(v,'.'))

Answer 3

[Image Analyst]

numberOfDots = length(find(v=='.'))