How do I count the number of each particular entry in a variable

I have a list of words stored as a variable on matlab and I need to be able to 'pickout' and count the different words. I know you can do that using the strfind function. However it is in a column not a row (Input strings must have one row.)So my question is how do you fix this, or is there a better way to pick out and out the words. An example of my problem

I have stored in my workspace the variable "countries"

val=

AUS

CAD

USA

USA

...

now i need to be able to count the number of each occurrence of the countries like 2 USA 1 AUS 1 CAD etc

Thanks

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Look at http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/68292-counting-frequency-of-strings

[Jayden Deng]

hi i was just wondering how would i make my variable into an array. suppose i use

country=array('countries')

where "countries" is one of the stored variables it does not work.

thanks

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

country={'abc';'def';'ghi'}  %to create a cell array
% to an element to your cell array
country{4}='jkl'