title: Count specific character occurrences in a string
body: <p>What is the simplest way to count the number of occurrences of a specific character in a string?</p>
  
  <p>That is, I need to write a function, countTheCharacters(), so that</p>
  
  <pre><code>str = "the little red hen"
  count = countTheCharacters(str,"e") ' Count should equal 4
  count = countTheCharacters(str,"t") ' Count should equal 3
  </code></pre>