Thread: Character frequency counting

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To analysing a string, then finding the char whose counts of appearing in string is max.
how to solve this question?

for example:

Code:

char *string = "ab---ebbbe";
the appearing counts of char 'b'  is max. It is 3.

I now think two method.
one is :

Code:

sort(string);
statisticalCountofChar(string);

the other is

Code:

char *individualofChar;
for ( string )
{
      for ( *individualofChar )
      {
            caculateCountofChar();
      }
}

is there even more better method to solve this question?
how to solve this question using HASHING TABLE? how to design hashing function ?