strcasecmp> <str_split
Last updated: Fri, 03 Feb 2012

str_word_count

(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5)

str_word_count — Retorna informação sobre as palavras usadas em uma string

Descrição

mixed str_word_count ( string $string [, int $format [, string $charlist ]] )

Conta o número de palavras dentro de string. Se o format opcional não é especificado, então o valor de retorno será um inteiro representando o número de palavras encontrado. No caso de o format estar especificado, o valor de retorno será um array, cujo conteúdo é dependente do format. O valor possível para o format e as saídas resultantes são listadas abaixo.

Devido ao propósito desta função, 'word' é definida como uma string dependente da localidade contendo caracteres alfanuméricos, que também podem contr, mas não iniciar com os caracteres "'" and "-".

Parâmetros

string

A string

format

Especifica o valor de retorno desta função. Os valores atualmente suportados são:

  • 0 - retorna o número de palavras encontradas
  • 1 - retorna um array contendo todas as palavras encontradas dentro de string
  • 2 - retorna um array associativo, onde a chave é a posição numérica da palavra dentro da string e o valor é a própria palavra.

charlist

Uma lista de caracteres adicionais que serão considerados como 'palavra'.

Valor Retornado

Retorna um array ou um inteiro, dependendo do format escolhido.

Histórico

Versão Descrição
5.1.0 Adicionado o parâmetro charlist

Exemplos

Exemplo #1 Um exemplo da str_word_count()

<?php

$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're
        looking          good today!";

print_r(str_word_count($str, 1));
print_r(str_word_count($str, 2));
print_r(str_word_count($str, 1, 'àáãç3'));

echo str_word_count($str);

?>

O exemplo acima irá imprimir:

Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] => fri
    [2] => nd
    [3] => you're
    [4] => looking
    [5] => good
    [6] => today
)

Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [6] => fri
    [10] => nd
    [14] => you're
    [29] => looking
    [46] => good
    [51] => today
)

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

Veja Também

  • explode() - Divide uma string em strings
  • preg_split() - Divide a string por uma expressão regular
  • split() - Separa strings em array utilizando expressões regulares
  • count_chars() - Retorna informações sobre os caracteres usados numa string
  • substr_count() - Conta o número de ocorrências de uma substring



strcasecmp> <str_split
Last updated: Fri, 03 Feb 2012
 
User Contributed Notes
str_word_count
cito at wikatu dot com
03-Feb-2012 07:29
<?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 splitter
function str_word_count_utf8($str) {
  return count(preg_split('~[^\p{L}\p{N}\']+~u',$str));
}
?>
Samer Ata
05-Jan-2012 07:21
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.

<?php
function 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;
?>
Stano110 at azet dot sk
10-Jul-2011 03:36
This function count words, is quick and works well with utf-8: (this is corrected version from my previous post)

<?php
function count_words($string)
{
    $string = htmlspecialchars_decode(strip_tags($string));
    if (strlen($string)==0)
        return 0;
    $t = array(' '=>1, '_'=>1, "\x20"=>1, "\xA0"=>1, "\x0A"=>1, "\x0D"=>1, "\x09"=>1, "\x0B"=>1, "\x2E"=>1, "\t"=>1, '='=>1, '+'=>1, '-'=>1, '*'=>1, '/'=>1, '\\'=>1, ','=>1, '.'=>1, ';'=>1, ':'=>1, '"'=>1, '\''=>1, '['=>1, ']'=>1, '{'=>1, '}'=>1, '('=>1, ')'=>1, '<'=>1, '>'=>1, '&'=>1, '%'=>1, '$'=>1, '@'=>1, '#'=>1, '^'=>1, '!'=>1, '?'=>1); // separators
    $count= isset($t[$string[0]])? 0:1;
    if (strlen($string)==1)
        return $count;
    for ($i=1;$i<strlen($string);$i++)
        if (isset($t[$string[$i-1]]) && !isset($t[$string[$i]])) // if new word starts
            $count++;
    return $count;
}
?>
Stano110 at azet dot sk
10-Jul-2011 02:05
This function count words, is quick and works well with utf-8:

    function count_words($string)
    {
        //$string = htmlspecialchars_decode(strip_tags($string)); // optional
        $t = array(' '=>1, '_'=>1, "\x20", "\xA0", "\x0A", "\x0D", "\x09", "\x0B", '='=>1, '+'=>1, '-'=>1, '*'=>1, '/'=>1, '\\'=>1, ','=>1, '.'=>1, ';'=>1, ':'=>1, '"'=>1, '\''=>1, '['=>1, ']'=>1, '{'=>1, '}'=>1, '('=>1, ')'=>1, '<'=>1, '>'=>1, '&'=>1, '%'=>1, '$'=>1, '@'=>1, '#'=>1, '^'=>1, '!'=>1, '?'=>1); // separators
        $count= isset($t[$string[0]])? 0:1;
        for ($i=1;$i<strlen($string);$i++)
            if (isset($t[$string[$i-1]]) && !isset($t[$string[$i]])) // if new word starts
                $count++;
        return $count;
    }
Zulfugar Ismayilzadeh admin at mid dot az
14-Apr-2011 01:52
This function count words. But this function works with UTF-8 too.

<?php

/**
 * @author Zulfugar Ismayilzadeh
 * @copyright 2011
 */

function count_words($string){
  
   $string = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$string));
  
   $word_array = explode(" ", $string);
  
   $num = count($word_array);
  
   return $num;
  
}

$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're               looking good today!";

echo count_words($str);

?>
matthewkastor at live dot com
05-Apr-2011 04:08
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>';
?>
dmVuY2lAc3RyYWhvdG5pLmNvbQ== (base64)
18-Oct-2010 02:39
to count words after converting a msword document to plain text with antiword, you can use this function:

<?php
function 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
lballard dot cat at gmail dot com
26-Sep-2010 05:17
word limiter:

$str = "my hella long string" ;
$length = 3;
$shortened =
implode(' ',array_slice(str_word_count($str,1),0,$length));
brettz9 - see yahoo
12-Feb-2010 09:33
Words also cannot end in a hyphen unless allowed by the charlist...
charliefrancis at gmail dot com
29-Jul-2009 01:56
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.

<?php
function 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
pdziok at gmail dot com
05-Jul-2009 09:08
I like your function eanimator but it got a little mistake - before the dots it putted another space.
This is a version with "bug" repaired:

<?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]." ";
    }
    if ($dots) {
        $string = substr($string, 0, strlen($string));
    }

    return $string.$dots;
}
?>
jazz090
13-Apr-2009 07:39
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]);
}
?>
splogamurugan at gmail dot com
05-Feb-2009 12:32
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 )
eanimator at yahoo dot com
10-Jan-2009 10:37
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;
}
?>
manrash at gmail dot com
22-Dec-2008 01:06
For spanish speakers a valid character map may be:

<?php
$characterMap = 'áéíóúüñ';

$count = str_word_count($text, 0, $characterMap);
?>
om+www dot php dot net at miakinen dot net
07-Sep-2008 10:23
The previous function str_word_count_utf8 implemented only the first parameter, $string. Here is an implementation which also supports the second parameter, $format. The $charlist is not supported, though it could be possible to give the possibility to change the MASK.

<?php
    define("WORD_COUNT_MASK", "/\p{L}[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}'\x{2019}]*/u");

    function str_word_count_utf8($string, $format = 0)
    {
        switch ($format) {
        case 1:
            preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches);
            return $matches[0];
        case 2:
            preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
            $result = array();
            foreach ($matches[0] as $match) {
                $result[$match[1]] = $match[0];
            }
            return $result;
        }
        return preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches);
    }
?>

Note that in the case $format=2 the numeric positions are expressed in octets, not in characters.
om+www dot php dot net at miakinen dot net
06-Sep-2008 11:29
Here is a code for a function str_word_count() compatible with UTF-8. I'm sorry that the comments are in French because I am not very good in English: anyway, these comments only try to explain things that are in PCRE or Unicode documentations.

<?php
    /*
     * Explications du masque pour preg_match_all.
     *
     * La fonction str_word_count standard considère qu'un mot est
     * une séquence de caractères qui contient tous les caractères
     * alphabétiques, et qui peut contenir, mais pas commencer
     * par "'" et "-".
     *
     * Avec Unicode et UTF-8, une lettre peut être un caractères
     * ASCII non accentué tel que "e" ou "E", mais aussi un "é" ou
     * un "É", lequel peut se représenter sous la forme de deux
     * caractères : d'abord le "E" non accentué, puis l'accent tout
     * seul. Une lettre "E" ou "É" fait partie de la classe « L »,
     * un accent de la classe « Mn ».
     *
     * Par ailleurs, "-" n'est plus le seul trait d'union possible.
     * Plutôt que de les lister individuellement, j'ai choisi de
     * tester les caractères de la classe « Pd ». Un inconvénient
     * est que cela inclut aussi le tiret cadratin et d'autres,
     * mais cet inconvénient existait déjà avec str_word_count et
     * le tiret ascii, et en outre il ne concerne pas le français
     * (contrairement à l'anglais, il y a toujours des espaces
     * autour de ces tirets).
     *
     * Enfin, "'" n'est pas non plus la seule apostrophe possible.
     * Mais contrairement aux tirets je teste juste l'apostrophe
     * typographique U+2019 à part au lieu de tester la classe « Pf »
     * car cette dernière contient trop de signes de ponctuation
     * à exclure de la définition d'un mot.
     *
     * Un mot commence donc par une lettre \p{L}, éventuellement
     * accentuée (suivie par un nombre quelconque de \p{Mn}), et
     * ensuite on peut rencontrer un nombre quelconques d'autres
     * lettres (\p{L} et \p{Mn}), de tirets (\p{Pd}) ou d'apostrophes
     * (' et \x{2019}). Tout ceci, bien sûr, dans un masque compatible
     * avec UTF-8 (/u à la fin).
     *
     * Pour les références, voir :
     * http://fr2.php.net/manual/fr/regexp.reference.php #regexp.reference.unicode
     * http://fr2.php.net/manual/fr/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php
     */
    define("WORD_COUNT_MASK", "/\p{L}[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}'\x{2019}]*/u");

    function str_word_count_utf8($str)
    {
        return preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $str, $matches);
    }
luce
05-Sep-2008 11:52
Fix Cathy function bug.

Original Cathy function :
[code]
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          $pos = array_keys($words);
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>
[/code]

This function return undefined index if $limit < $text.

For fix it :
[code]
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limitstr, $limitwrd) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limitstr) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          if ($words > $limitwrd) {
              $pos = array_keys($words);
              $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limitwrd]) . '...';
          }
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>
[/code]
aspu.ru
17-Jun-2008 01:21
str_word_count: mixed (string string, [int format], [string charlist])

It can help you to solve problem with digest and some locales. Best regards.
robocop at robotix dot fr
30-Mar-2008 03:21
function count_words($texte)
{
$texte=trim($texte);
$motsinutiles = array(' * ', ' - ', ' : ', '\n');
$texte = str_replace($motsinutiles, '', $texte);
$texte = preg_replace("/\s\s+/", " ", $texte);
$decoupeapostrophes = count(explode('\'', $texte)); //On découpe la chaine en apostrophes
   if($decoupeapostrophes==0) $nombreapostrophes = 0;
   if ($decoupeapostrophes%2==0) {$nombreapostrophes = $decoupeapostrophes/2;}
   else  $nombreapostrophes = ($decoupeapostrophes/2)-0.5;
$nombreespace = count(explode(' ', $texte));

return $nombreespace+$nombreapostrophes;   
}
security_man
24-Dec-2007 11:13
there was a glitch in the code cathy put a post or two ago... should be:

    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
    $text = strip_tags($text);
      $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
      $pos = array_keys($words);
      if (count($words) > $limit) {
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . ' ...';
      }
    return $text;
    }

I also added the strip tags in case there is html in there to gum up the works
Adeel Khan
08-Dec-2007 06:01
<?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);

}

?>
Cathy
19-Jul-2007 10:16
A cute little function for truncating text to a given word limit:
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          $pos = array_keys($words);
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>
geertdd at gmail dot com
13-Jun-2007 06:04
This is an update to my previously posted word_limiter() function. The regex is even more optimized now. Just replace the preg_match line. Change to:

<?php
preg_match('/^\s*(?:\S+\s*){1,'. (int) $limit .'}/', $str, $matches);
geertdd at gmail dot com
28-May-2007 01:52
Here's a very fast word limiter function that preserves the original whitespace.

<?php

function word_limiter($str, $limit = 100, $end_char = '&#8230;') {
   
    if (trim($str) == '')
        return $str;
   
    preg_match('/\s*(?:\S*\s*){'. (int) $limit .'}/', $str, $matches);

    if (strlen($matches[0]) == strlen($str))
        $end_char = '';

    return rtrim($matches[0]) . $end_char;
}

?>

For the thought process behind this function, please read: http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/51788/

Geert De Deckere
joshua dot blake at gmail dot com
02-Mar-2007 02:02
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:

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
josh at joshblake.net
01-Mar-2007 12:57
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:

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.
30-Jan-2007 06:15
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;
      }
?>
Aurelien Marchand
06-Oct-2006 06:06
I found a more reliable way to print, say the first 100 words and then print elipses. My code goes this way;

$threshold_length = 80; // 80 words max
$phrase = "...."; // populate this with the text you want to display
$abody = str_word_count($phrase,2);
if(count($abody) >= $threshold_length){ // gotta cut
  $tbody = array_keys($abody);
  echo "<p>" . substr($phrase,0,$tbody[$threshold_length]) . "... <span class=\"more\"><a href=\"?\">read more</a></span> </p>\n";
} else { // put the whole thing
  echo "<p>" . $phrase . "</p>\n";
}

For any questions, com.iname@artaxerxes2
lwright at psu dot edu
17-Aug-2006 08:51
If you are looking to count the frequency of words, try:

<?php

$wordfrequency = array_count_values( str_word_count( $string, 1) );

?>
rabin at rab dot in
04-Apr-2006 08:03
There is a small bug in the "trim_text" function by "webmaster at joshstmarie dot com" below. If the string's word count is lesser than or equal to $truncation, that function will cut off the last word in the string.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: above referenced note has been removed]

This fixes the problem:

<?php
function trim_text_fixed($string, $truncation = 250) {
    $matches = preg_split("/\s+/", $string, $truncation + 1);
    $sz = count($matches);
    if ( $sz > $truncation ) {
        unset($matches[$sz-1]);
        return implode(' ',$matches);
    }
    return $string;
}
?>
webmaster at joshstmarie dot com
25-Sep-2005 01:58
Trying to make an effiecient word splitter, and "paragraph limiter", eg, limit item text to 100, or 200 words and so-forth.

I don't know how well this compares, but it works nicely.

function trim_text($string, $word_count=100)
{
    $trimmed = "";
    $string = preg_replace("/\040+/"," ", trim($string));
    $stringc = explode(" ",$string);
    echo sizeof($stringc);
    if($word_count >= sizeof($stringc))
    {
        // nothing to do, our string is smaller than the limit.
      return $string;
    }
    elseif($word_count < sizeof($stringc))
    {
        // trim the string to the word count
        for($i=0;$i<$word_count;$i++)
        {
            $trimmed .= $stringc[$i]." ";
        }
       
        if(substr($trimmed, strlen(trim($trimmed))-1, 1) == '.')
          return trim($trimmed).'..';
        else
          return trim($trimmed).'...';
    }
}

$text = "some  test          text goes in here, I'm not sure, but ok.";
echo trim_text($text,5);
MadCoder
15-Aug-2005 06:12
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)

----------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------
$string = "one two three four";
echo trim_text($string, 3);

returns:
one two three...
jtey at uoguelph dot ca
14-Aug-2005 01:21
In the previous note, the example will only extract from the string, words separated by exactly one space.  To properly extract words from all strings, use regular expressions.

Example (extracting the first 4 words):
<?php
$string = "One    two three       four  five six";
echo implode(" ", array_slice(preg_split("/\s+/", $string), 0, 4));
?>

The above $string would not have otherwise worked when using the explode() method below.
jtey at uoguelph dot ca
14-Aug-2005 04:59
In reply to muz1's post below:

You can also take advantage of using other built in PHP functions to get to your final result.  Consider the following:
<?php
$string = "One two three four five six seven eight nine ten.";
// the first n words to extract
$n = 3;
// extract the words
$words = explode(" ", $string);
// chop the words array down to the first n elements
$firstN = array_slice($words, 0, $n);
// glue the 3 elements back into a spaced sentence
$firstNAsAString = implode(" ", $firstN);
// display it
echo $firstNAsAString;
?>

Or to do it all in one line:
<?php
echo implode(" ", array_slice(explode(" ", $string), 0, $n));
?>
muz1 at muzcore dot com
11-Aug-2005 09:56
This function is awesome however I needed to display the first 100 words of a string. I am submitting this as a possible solution but also to get feedback as to whether it is the most efficient way of doing it.

<?
                                    $currString = explode(" ", $string);
for ($wordCounter=0; $wordCounter<100; $wordCounter++) { echo $currString[$wordCounter]." "; }
?>
16-Jan-2005 04:38
This function seems to view numbers as whitespace. I.e. a word consisting of numbers only won't be counted.
aix at lux dot ee
14-Nov-2004 12:53
One function.
<?php
if (!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 text
print_r($c);
echo $d;
?>
aidan at php dot net
26-Jun-2004 12:02
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
Kirils Solovjovs
22-Feb-2004 06:06
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...

<?php
function 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;
}

?>
Artimis
14-Oct-2003 11:32
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.
andrea at 3site dot it
19-May-2003 01:55
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
?>
megat at megat dot co dot uk
18-Apr-2003 03:29
[Ed: You'd probably want to use regular expressions if this was the case --alindeman @ php.net]

Consider what will happen in some of the above suggestions when a person puts more than one space between words. That's why it's not sufficient just to explode the string.
olivier at ultragreen dot net
11-Apr-2003 03:10
I will not discuss the accuracy of this function but one of the source codes above does this.

<?php
function wrdcnt($haystack) {
 $cnt = explode(" ", $haystack);
 return count($cnt) - 1;
}
?>

That could be replace by

<?php
function wrdcnt($haystack) {
 return substr_count($haystack,' ') + 1;
}
?>

I doubt this does need to be a function :)
philip at cornado dot com
06-Apr-2003 04:30
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.
rcATinterfacesDOTfr
16-Jan-2003 05:58
Here is another way to count words :
$word_count = count(preg_split('/\W+/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));
brettNOSPAM at olwm dot NO_SPAM dot com
09-Nov-2002 10:06
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. ;-)
gorgonzola at nospam dot org
31-Oct-2002 11:48
i tried to write a wordcounter and ended up with this:

<?php
//strip html-codes or entities
$text = strip_tags(strtr($text, array_flip(get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES))));
//count the words
$wordcount = preg_match_all("#(\w+)#", $text, $match_dummy );
?>

strcasecmp> <str_split
Last updated: Fri, 03 Feb 2012