Can one display the word count of a specific paragraph using texcount?

Question

I am currently writing a research essay and was wondering if it is possible to create a function that links a small part of the output of the texcount function to another location in the file, in my case the title page.

Here is a MWE (minimum working example) of my LaTeX file:

documentclass[12pt,a4paper,footheight=20pt,footsepline,headheight=20pt,headsepline]{article}
usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
usepackage[english]{babel}
usepackage[nottoc,numbib]{tocbibind}
usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage,xcolor,lastpage,verbatim,moreverb,lmodern,textcomp,tikz,float,pgf,pgfplots,hyperref}

pgfplotsset{compat=newest}

ihead{color{gray} ...} 
chead{color{gray} ...} 
ohead{color{gray} ...}
cfoot{color{gray} thepage of pageref{LastPage} }

setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}
setlength{headheight}{25pt}

usepackage{setspace}
doublespacing

addtokomafont{headsepline}{color{gray}} 
addtokomafont{footsepline}{color{gray}}

immediatewrite18{texcount -sum main.tex > wordcount}

newcommandwordcount{verbatiminput{wordcount}}

title{...} 
author{...}
date{vspace{8cm} 4000 Words in Essay || 500 Words in RPPF}

begin{document}

maketitle
thispagestyle{empty}
newpage
tableofcontents
newpage
section{Introduction}

newpage
section{...}

newpage
section{Conclusion}

newpage
begin{thebibliography}{}
    bibitem{xxx}
    bibitem{yyy}
end{thebibliography}

newpage
section{RPPF}

newpage 
wordcount
end{document}

I apologize for the unorthodox use of the date function :D

Essentially what I want to do is replace the "500" in the date by a self-updating word count of the RPPF section.

If this is possible please let me know.

Thanks

geguze · Answer

I could get the total number of words (including section headers) from texcount by modifying the following idea https://app.uio.no/ifi/texcount/faq.html#latexcall (made some modifications to get the number of words, see MWE below).

To extract the words for the specific subsection, I had to rely on a bash script, see below:

#!/bin/bash
awk '/RPPF/ {print $1}' main.all | awk -F+ '{print $1}'

which I called getwords.sh. This provides the words (excluding the word 'RPPF') in the section 'RPPF'.

The file main.all is the output of texcount. You can put everything together into a single script if you want.

See MWE below.

Since the output files are just a single number, I just have included them instead of importing via verbatiminput. However, I created the commands as well if that's what you need.

Hope this helps.

documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
usepackage{verbatim}

immediatewrite18{texcount -out=jobname.all jobname.tex; ./getwords.sh > jobname.sec}
immediatewrite18{texcount -out=jobname.wrd -template="{word}" jobname.tex }
newcommandallcount{verbatiminput{jobname.all}}
newcommandwordcount{verbatiminput{jobname.wrd}}
newcommandseccount{verbatiminput{jobname.sec}}

title{A Title} 
author{An Author}
date{}

begin{document}

maketitle
begin{center}
Total number of words: input{jobname.wrd}
Total number of words in section RFFP: input{jobname.sec}
end{center}
thispagestyle{empty}
newpage
tableofcontents
newpage

section{Introduction}
Test

section{Problem}
Test Test Test

section{Conclusion}

begin{thebibliography}{}
    bibitem{xxx}
    bibitem{yyy}
end{thebibliography}

section{RPPF}
Test Test Test

newpage 
allcount
end{document}

Can one display the word count of a specific paragraph using texcount?

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question