regex - Regular Expression for accurate word-count using JavaScript

Question

I'm trying to put together a regular expression for a JavaScript command that accurately counts the number of words in a textarea.

One solution I had found is as follows:

document.querySelector("#wordcount").innerHTML = document.querySelector("#editor").value.split(/w+/).length -1;

But this doesn't count any non-Latin characters (eg: Cyrillic, Hangul, etc); it skips over them completely.

Another one I put together:

document.querySelector("#wordcount").innerHTML = document.querySelector("#editor").value.split(/s+/g).length -1;

But this doesn't count accurately unless the document ends in a space character. If a space character is appended to the value being counted it counts 1 word even with an empty document. Furthermore, if the document begins with a space character an extraneous word is counted.

Is there a regular expression I can put into this command that counts the words accurately, regardless of input method?

Answer 1

This should do what you're after:

value.match(/S+/g).length;

Rather than splitting the string, you're matching on any sequence of non-whitespace characters.

There's the added bonus of being easily able to extract each word if needed ;)