because it struck me that word counting is much harder than it looks

There is another dimension to what constitutes a word and how they can be differentiated programmatically. They require context which takes us into a totally different level of complexity.

Let's take the seemingly simple word post

When you read the word you might think of what someone puts on social media, or perhaps the mail that gets delivered to your door. But equally you may imagine the pole in the ground that keeps your fence upright. Perhaps you have been given a new post at work as your role has changed due to the company being able to post a good profit. Of course, at one time we didn't need to worry - but post the advent of computing, we do!

In reply to Re^3: How to count the vocabulary of an author? by Bod
in thread How to count the vocabulary of an author? by karlgoethebier

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.