Question

In Matlab: Write a program that accepts an input string and a character from the user and determines how many times the character appears within the string.

Answer 1

this is Python. Believe Matlab is C+

Answer 2

there is a function defined to do that in python for lists. list.count(x)
Return the number of times x appears in the list.

Answer 3

Matlab?

In Python you can do

def character_tally():
tally = 0
user_string = raw_input('Enter a string: ')
user_character = raw_input('Enter a character: ')
for each in user_string:
if each == user_character:
tally += 1
return tally

If you're using Python3, remember to use input() instead of raw_input().