r - Character frequency in a string -

i want create function 2 arguments show me frequency of character in given word: x <- word, y <- letter. so, created following function:

frequency <- function(x,y) {     word <- strsplit(x,"")     counter <- 0     (i in 1:length(word)){         if (word[i] == y) counter=counter+1     }     print(counter) } 

the basic idea of function split characters of given word, iterate on them , increase value of counter if condition met. function returns value of 0. what's cause of this?

as noted frank, better avoid loops. can so:

word <-"word" y <-"d"  sum(unlist(strsplit(word,""))==y) [1] 1