str_word_count

<?php/*** * This simple utf-8 word count function (it only counts)  * is a bit faster then the one with preg_match_all * about 10x slower then the built-in str_word_count *  * If you need the hyphen or other code points as word-characters * just put them into the [brackets] like [^\p{L}\p{N}\'\-] * If the pattern contains utf-8, utf8_encode() the pattern, * as it is expected to be valid utf-8 (using the u modifier). **/// Jonny 5's simple word splitterfunction str_word_count_utf8($str) {  return count(preg_split('~[^\p{L}\p{N}\']+~u',$str));}?>

We can also specify a range of values for charlist.

<?php
$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're
       looking          good today! 
       look1234ing";
print_r(str_word_count($str, 1, '0..3'));
?>

will give the result as 

Array ( [0] => Hello [1] => fri3nd [2] => you're [3] => looking [4] => good [5] => today [6] => look123 [7] => ing )

<?php/** * Returns the number of words in a string. * As far as I have tested, it is very accurate. * The string can have HTML in it, * but you should do something like this first: * *    $search = array( *      '@<script[^>]*?>.*?</script>@si', *      '@<style[^>]*?>.*?</style>@siU', *      '@<![\s\S]*?--[ \t\n\r]*>@' *    ); *    $html = preg_replace($search, '', $html); * */function word_count($html) {  # strip all html tags  $wc = strip_tags($html);  # remove 'words' that don't consist of alphanumerical characters or punctuation  $pattern = "#[^(\w|\d|\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-|:|\&|@)]+#";  $wc = trim(preg_replace($pattern, " ", $wc));  # remove one-letter 'words' that consist only of punctuation  $wc = trim(preg_replace("#\s*[(\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-|:|\&|@)]\s*#", " ", $wc));  # remove superfluous whitespace  $wc = preg_replace("/\s\s+/", " ", $wc);  # split string into an array of words  $wc = explode(" ", $wc);  # remove empty elements  $wc = array_filter($wc);  # return the number of words  return count($wc);}?>

Here's a function that will trim a $string down to a certian number of words, and add a...   on the end of it.
(explansion of muz1's 1st 100 words code)

----------------------------------------------
<?php
function trim_text($text, $count){
$text = str_replace("  ", " ", $text);
$string = explode(" ", $text);
for ( $wordCounter = 0; $wordCounter <= $count;wordCounter++ ){ 
$trimed .= $string[$wordCounter];
if ( $wordCounter < $count ){ $trimed .= " "; }
else { $trimed .= "..."; }
}
$trimed = trim($trimed);
return $trimed;
}
?>

Usage
------------------------------------------------
<?php
$string = "one two three four";
echo trim_text($string, 3);
?>

returns:
one two three...

Here is a count words function which supports UTF-8 and Hebrew. I tried other functions but they don't work. Notice that in Hebrew, '"' and '\'' can be used in words, so they are not separators. This function is not perfect, I would prefer a function we are using in JavaScript which considers all characters except [a-zA-Zא-ת0-9_\'\"] as separators, but I don't know how to do it in PHP.I removed some of the separators which don't work well with Hebrew ("\x20", "\xA0", "\x0A", "\x0D", "\x09", "\x0B", "\x2E"). I also removed the underline.This is a fix to my previous post on this page - I found out that my function returned an incorrect result for an empty string. I corrected it and I'm also attaching another function - my_strlen.<?php function count_words($string) {    // Return the number of words in a string.    $string= str_replace("&#039;", "'", $string);    $t= array(' ', "\t", '=', '+', '-', '*', '/', '\\', ',', '.', ';', ':', '[', ']', '{', '}', '(', ')', '<', '>', '&', '%', '$', '@', '#', '^', '!', '?', '~'); // separators    $string= str_replace($t, " ", $string);    $string= trim(preg_replace("/\s+/", " ", $string));    $num= 0;    if (my_strlen($string)>0) {        $word_array= explode(" ", $string);        $num= count($word_array);    }    return $num;}function my_strlen($s) {    // Return mb_strlen with encoding UTF-8.    return mb_strlen($s, "UTF-8");}?>

For spanish speakers a valid character map may be:

<?php
$characterMap = 'áéíóúüñ';

$count = str_word_count($text, 0, $characterMap);
?>

This example may not be pretty, but It proves accurate:

<?php
//count words
$words_to_count = strip_tags($body);
$pattern = "/[^(\w|\d|\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-\-|:|\&|@)]+/";
$words_to_count = preg_replace ($pattern, " ", $words_to_count);
$words_to_count = trim($words_to_count);
$total_words = count(explode(" ",$words_to_count));
?>

Hope I didn't miss any punctuation. ;-)

Words also cannot end in a hyphen unless allowed by the charlist...

Hi this is the first time I have posted on the php manual, I hope some of you will like this little function I wrote.It returns a string with a certain character limit, but still retaining whole words.It breaks out of the foreach loop once it has found a string short enough to display, and the character list can be edited.<?phpfunction word_limiter( $text, $limit = 30, $chars = '0123456789' ) {    if( strlen( $text ) > $limit ) {        $words = str_word_count( $text, 2, $chars );        $words = array_reverse( $words, TRUE );        foreach( $words as $length => $word ) {            if( $length + strlen( $word ) >= $limit ) {                array_shift( $words );            } else {                break;            }        }        $words = array_reverse( $words );        $text = implode( " ", $words ) . '&hellip;';    }    return $text;}$str = "Hello this is a list of words that is too long";echo '1: ' . word_limiter( $str );$str = "Hello this is a list of words";echo '2: ' . word_limiter( $str );?>1: Hello this is a list of words&hellip;2: Hello this is a list of words

This function seems to view numbers as whitespace. I.e. a word consisting of numbers only won't be counted.

This function doesn't handle  accents, even in a locale with accent.<?phpecho str_word_count("Is working"); // =2setlocale(LC_ALL, 'fr_FR.utf8');echo str_word_count("Not wôrking"); // expects 2, got 3.?>Cito solution treats punctuation as words and thus isn't a good workaround.<?phpfunction str_word_count_utf8($str) {      return count(preg_split('~[^\p{L}\p{N}\']+~u',$str));}echo str_word_count_utf8("Is wôrking"); //=2echo str_word_count_utf8("Not wôrking."); //=3?>My solution:<?phpfunction str_word_count_utf8($str) {    $a = preg_split('/\W+/u', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);    return count($a);}echo str_word_count_utf8("Is wôrking"); // = 2echo str_word_count_utf8("Is wôrking! :)"); // = 2?>

to count words after converting a msword document to plain text with antiword, you can use this function:<?phpfunction count_words($text) {    $text = str_replace(str_split('|'), '', $text); // remove these chars (you can specify more)    $text = trim(preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $text)); // remove extra spaces    $text = preg_replace('/-{2,}/', '', $text); // remove 2 or more dashes in a row    $len = strlen($text);        if (0 === $len) {        return 0;    }        $words = 1;        while ($len--) {        if (' ' === $text[$len]) {            ++$words;        }    }        return $words;}?>it strips the pipe "|" chars, which antiword uses to format tables in its plain text output, removes more than one dashes in a row (also used in tables), then counts the words.counting words using explode() and then count() is not a good idea for huge texts, because it uses much memory to store the text once more as an array. this is why i'm using while() { .. } to walk the string

Here is another way to count words :$word_count = count(preg_split('/\W+/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));

Personally, I dont like using this function becuase the characters it omits are sometime nessesery for instance MS Word counts ">" or "<" alone as single word where this function doesnt. I like using this however, it counts EVERYTHING:

<?php
function num_words($string){
    preg_match_all("/\S+/", $string, $matches);
    return count($matches[0]);
}
?>

I needed a function which would extract the first hundred words out of a given input while retaining all markup such as line breaks, double spaces and the like. Most of the regexp based functions posted above were accurate in that they counted out a hundred words, but recombined the paragraph by imploding an array down to a string. This did away with any such hopes of line breaks, and thus I devised a crude but very accurate function which does all that I ask it to:

<?php
function Truncate($input, $numWords) 
{
  if(str_word_count($input,0)>$numWords)
  {
    $WordKey = str_word_count($input,1);
    $PosKey = str_word_count($input,2);
    reset($PosKey);
    foreach($WordKey as $key => &$value)
    {
        $value=key($PosKey);
        next($PosKey);
    }
    return substr($input,0,$WordKey[$numWords]);
  }
  else {return $input;}
}
?>

The idea behind it? Go through the keys of the arrays returned by str_word_count and associate the number of each word with its character position in the phrase. Then use substr to return everything up until the nth character. I have tested this function on rather large entries and it seems to be efficient enough that it does not bog down at all.

Cheers!

Josh

I was interested in a function which returned the first few words out of a larger string.

In reality, I wanted a preview of the first hundred words of a blog entry which was well over that.

I found all of the other functions which explode and implode strings to arrays lost key markups such as line breaks etc.

So, this is what I came up with:

<?php
function WordTruncate($input, $numWords) {
if(str_word_count($input,0)>$numWords)
{
    $WordKey = str_word_count($input,1);
    $WordIndex = array_flip(str_word_count($input,2));
    return substr($input,0,$WordIndex[$WordKey[$numWords]]);
}
else {return $input;}
}
?>

While I haven't counted per se, it's accurate enough for my needs. It will also return the entire string if it's less than the specified number of words.

The idea behind it? Use str_word_count to identify the nth word, then use str_word_count to identify the position of that word within the string, then use substr to extract up to that position.

Josh.

This is my own version of to get SEO meta description from wordpress post content. it is also generic usage function to get the first n words from a string.<?phpfunction my_meta_description($text,$n=10){$text=strip_tags($text);  // not neccssary for none HTML// $text=strip_shortcodes($text); // uncomment only inside wordpress system$text = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$text));$word_array = explode(" ", $text);if (count($word_array) <= $n)return implode(" ",$word_array);else{$text='';foreach ($word_array as $length=>$word){    $text.=$word ;    if($length==$n) break;    else $text.=" ";}}return $text;?>

Some ask not just split on ' ', well, it's because simply exploding on a ' ' isn't fully accurate.  Words can be separated by tabs, newlines, double spaces, etc.  This is why people tend to seperate on all whitespace with regular expressions.

One function.<?phpif (!function_exists('word_count')) {function word_count($str,$n = "0"){    $m=strlen($str)/2;    $a=1;    while ($a<$m) {        $str=str_replace("  "," ",$str);        $a++;        }    $b = explode(" ", $str);    $i = 0;     foreach ($b as $v) {        $i++;        }    if ($n==1) return $b;    else  return $i;    }}$str="Tere Tartu linn";$c  = word_count($str,1); // it return an array$d  = word_count($str); // it return int - how many words was in textprint_r($c);echo $d;?>

Here is a php work counting function together with a javascript version which will print the same result.<?php      //Php word counting function      function word_count($theString)      {        $char_count = strlen($theString);        $fullStr = $theString." ";        $initial_whitespace_rExp = "^[[:alnum:]]$";                $left_trimmedStr = ereg_replace($initial_whitespace_rExp,"",$fullStr);        $non_alphanumerics_rExp = "^[[:alnum:]]$";        $cleanedStr = ereg_replace($non_alphanumerics_rExp," ",$left_trimmedStr);        $splitString = explode(" ",$cleanedStr);                $word_count = count($splitString)-1;                if(strlen($fullStr)<2)        {          $word_count=0;        }              return $word_count;      }?><?php      //Function to count words in a phrase      function wordCount(theString)      {        var char_count = theString.length;        var fullStr = theString + " ";        var initial_whitespace_rExp = /^[^A-Za-z0-9]+/gi;        var left_trimmedStr = fullStr.replace(initial_whitespace_rExp, "");        var non_alphanumerics_rExp = rExp = /[^A-Za-z0-9]+/gi;        var cleanedStr = left_trimmedStr.replace(non_alphanumerics_rExp, " ");        var splitString = cleanedStr.split(" ");                var word_count = splitString.length -1;                if (fullStr.length <2)         {          word_count = 0;        }              return word_count;      }?>

Nothing of this worked for me. I think countwords() is very encoding dependent. This is the code for win1257. For other layots you just need to redefine the ranges of letters...<?phpfunction countwords($text){        $ls=0;//was it a whitespace?        $cc33=0;//counter        for($i=0;$i<strlen($text);$i++){                $spstat=false; //is it a number or a letter?                $ot=ord($text[$i]);                if( (($ot>=48) && ($ot<=57)) ||  (($ot>=97) && ($ot<=122)) || (($ot>=65) && ($ot<=90)) || ($ot==170) ||                (($ot>=192) && ($ot<=214)) || (($ot>=216) && ($ot<=246)) || (($ot>=248) && ($ot<=254))  )$spstat=true;                if(($ls==0)&&($spstat)){                        $ls=1;                        $cc33++;                }                if(!$spstat)$ls=0;        }        return $cc33;}?>

Turns out the charlist is set by default for the web. For example, the stringCopyright © ABC Ltd.is 3 words in the cli and 4 words if executing in web context.

Never use this function to count/separate alphanumeric words, it will just split them up words to words, numbers to numbers.  You could refer to another function "preg_split" when splitting alphanumeric words.  It works with Chinese characters as well.

This needs improvement, but works well as is.<?php/** * Generates an alphabetical index of unique words, and a count of their occurrences, in a file. *  * This works on html pages or plain text files. * This function uses file_get_contents, so it  * is possible to use a url instead of a local filename. *  * Change the search pattern at  * <code> $junk = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z]/', $word); </code> * if you want to keep words with numbers or other characters. The pattern * I've set searches for anything that is not an upper or lowercase letter, * you may want something else. *  * The array returned will look something like this: * <code> * Array * ( *     [0] => Array *        ( *            [word] => a *            [count] => 21 *        ) *  *     [1] => Array *        ( *            [word] => ability *            [count] => 1 *        ) * ) * </code> *  * @param string $file The file ( or url ) you want to create an index from. * @return array  */function index_page($file) {    $index = array();    $find = array(        '/\r/',        '/\n/',        '/\s\s+/'    );    $replace = array(        ' ',        ' ',        ' '    );    $work = file_get_contents($file);    $work = preg_replace('/[>][<]/', '> <', $work);    $work = strip_tags($work);    $work = strtolower($work);    $work = preg_replace($find, $replace, $work);    $work = trim($work);    $work = explode(' ', $work);    natcasesort($work);    $i = 0;    foreach($work as $word) {        $word = trim($word);        $junk = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z]/', $word);        if($junk == 1) {            $word = '';        }        if( (!empty($word)) && ($word != '') ) {            if(!isset($index[$i]['word'])) { // if not set this is a new index                $index[$i]['word'] = $word;                $index[$i]['count'] = 1;            } elseif( $index[$i]['word'] == $word ) {  // count repeats                $index[$i]['count'] += 1;            } else { // else this is a different word, increment $i and create an entry                $i++;                $index[$i]['word'] = $word;                $index[$i]['count'] = 1;            }        }    }    unset($work);    return($index);}?>example usage:<?php$file = 'http://www.php.net/';// or use a local file, see file_get_contents() for valid filenames and restrictions.$index = index_page($file);echo '<pre>'.print_r($index,true).'</pre>';?>

If you are looking to count the frequency of words, try:<?php$wordfrequency = array_count_values( str_word_count( $string, 1) );?>

if string doesn't contain the space " ", the explode method doesn't do anything, so i've wrote this and it seems works better ... i don't know about time and resource

<?php
function str_incounter($match,$string) {
$count_match = 0;
for($i=0;$i<strlen($string);$i++) {
if(strtolower(substr($string,$i,strlen($match)))==strtolower($match)) {
$count_match++;
}
}
return $count_match;
}
?>

example 

<?php
$string = "something:something!!something";
$count_some = str_incounter("something",$string);
// will return 3
?>

My quick and rough wordLimiter function.

<?php
function WordLimiter($text,$limit=20){
    $explode = explode(' ',$text);
    $string  = '';
        
    $dots = '...';
    if(count($explode) <= $limit){
        $dots = '';
    }
    for($i=0;$i<$limit;$i++){
        $string .= $explode[$i]." ";
    }
        
    return $string.$dots;
}
?>

//To get an accurate word count in English, some diacritical marks have // to be added for words like née, Chloë, naïve, coöpt, façade, piñata, etc.  $count = str_word_count($str, 0, 'éëïöçñÉËÏÖÇÑ');//To get the word count for any European language using a Roman alphabet:$count = str_word_count($str, 0, 'äëïöüÄËÏÖÜáǽćéíĺńóŕśúźÁǼĆÉÍĹŃÓŔŚÚŹ'.   'àèìòùÀÈÌÒÙãẽĩõñũÃẼĨÕÑŨâêîôûÂÊÎÔÛăĕğĭŏœ̆ŭĂĔĞĬŎŒ̆Ŭ'.   'āēīōūĀĒĪŌŪőűŐŰąęįųĄĘĮŲåůÅŮæÆøØýÝÿŸþÞẞßđĐıIœŒ'.   'čďěľňřšťžČĎĚĽŇŘŠŤŽƒƑðÐłŁçģķļșțÇĢĶĻȘȚħĦċėġżĊĖĠŻʒƷǯǮŋŊŧŦ');

preg_match_all based function to mimic str_word_count behavior:<?phpfunction mb_str_word_count($str, $format = 2, $charlist = '') {  if ($format < 0 || $format > 2) {    throw new InvalidArgumentException('Argument #2 ($format) must be a valid format value');  }  $count = preg_match_all('#[\p{L}\p{N}][\p{L}\p{N}\'' . $charlist . ']*#u', $str, $matches, $format === 2 ? PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE : PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);  if ($format === 0) {    return $count;  }  $matches = $matches[0] ?? [];  if ($format === 2) {    $result = [];    foreach ($matches as $match) {      $result[$match[1]] = $match[0];    }    return $result;  }  return $matches;}?>

This functionality is now implemented in the PEAR package PHP_Compat.More information about using this function without upgrading your version of PHP can be found on the below link:http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_Compat