title: How to count string occurences in a list(Of String)
body: <p>I am looking to dynamically count from a list, how many times items have occured.  I can do it below if I specify the value I am looking for, but what I am really looking to do is to iterate through my list, count occurences, and total them out. My current code is below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Dim itemlist As New List(Of String)
  itemlist.add("VALUE1")
  itemlist.add("VALUE2")
  itemlist.add("VALUE3")
  
  
      Dim count As Integer = 0
  
      For Each value In itemlist
  
          If value.Equals("VALUE1") Then count += 1
  
      Next
  
   Msgbox(count.tostring)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my point would be instead of searching for the value, let the app total them up and display the counted occurences it to the user, similar to a "COUNTIF" in excel.  I cant find much on this without using LINQ, Thanks</p>