T-SQL function to get a char count

I needed an efficient and reusable way to get character counts in strings at the database level and produced the following udf which takes a string and a character and returns the number of occurrences of the character in the string.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[uf_charCount] (@string varchar(8000), @character char(1))
RETURNS SMALLINT  
/* 
	Purpose: returns the number of occurrences of @character in @string 
	Author: Kevin J. Miller (www.websolete.com)
	
	Example: 
		SELECT dbo.uf_charCount('four score and seven years ago','s') 
		would return: 3
		
 */
AS
BEGIN 
	DECLARE @stringtrunc varchar(8000); 
	SET @stringtrunc = REPLACE(@string,@character,''); -- remove the specified character 
	RETURN (LEN(@string) - LEN(@stringtrunc)); -- return the difference in length, this is the char count
END