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  3. Node.js — How to Count Words in a File

Node.js — How to Count Words in a File

Sometimes you want to count the number of words in a given string. This string value may come from a variable, a database column, or the content of a file. For example, you can calculate the reading time of a text using a text’s word count.

This tutorial shows you how to count words from a text using Node.js

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  24. How to Count Words in a File
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Using the „@supercharge/strings“ Package

I’m the maintainer of the @supercharge/fs and the @supercharge/strings packages. The @supercharge/fs package provides convenient file system methods. The @supercharge/strings package provides useful string utilities. Both packages come with handy methods allowing you to count the words in a file using Node.js.

Here’s how you can count the words of a given string:

import Str from '@supercharge/strings'

Str(`  
Hey pal,

Supercharge is awesome!  
`).words()
// [ 'Hey', 'pal', 'Supercharge', 'is', 'awesome' ]

Str(text).words().length  
// 5

Str('slug-case-works-too').words()  
// [ 'slug', 'case', 'works', 'too' ]

Str('snake_case_also').words()  
// [ 'snake', 'case', 'also' ]

Str('camelCase').words()  
// [ 'camel', 'Case']

You may combine both packages to retrieve the word count of a file’s content. First, read the file content as a string and then count the words:

import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'  
import Str from '@supercharge/strings'

const content = await Fs.content('future-studio/tutorials/node-js-how-to-count-words-in-a-file.md')

Str(content).words().length  
// 250

Enjoy!

Mentioned Resources

Marcus Pöhls

Marcus is a fullstack JS developer. He’s passionate about the hapi framework for Node.js and loves to build web apps and APIs. Creator of Futureflix and the “learn hapi” learning path.

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