Objective-C: -[NSString wordCount]

Question

What\'s a simple implementation of the following NSString category method that returns the number of words in self, where words are separated by an

Answer 1

There are a number of simpler implementations, but they all have tradeoffs. For example, Cocoa (but not Cocoa Touch) has word-counting baked in:

- (NSUInteger)wordCount {
    return [[NSSpellChecker sharedSpellChecker] countWordsInString:self language:nil];
}

It's also trivial to count words as accurately as the scanner simply using [[self componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]] count]. But I've found the performance of that method degrades a lot for longer strings.

So it depends on the tradeoffs you want to make. I've found the absolute fastest is just to go straight-up ICU. If you want simplest, using existing code is probably simpler than writing any code at all.