How can I use the UNIX shell to count the number of times a letter appears in a text file?

unix, word-count

Solution

grep char -o filename | wc -l

Problem

I have a few text files and I'd like to count how many times a letter appears in each? Specifically, I'd like to use the UNIX shell to do this, in the form of: cat file | .... do stuff... Is there a way I can get the wc command to do this?

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