Fast word count function in Vim

Question

I am trying to display a live word count in the vim statusline. I do this by setting my status line in my .vimrc and inserting a function into it. The idea of this function

Answer 1

Here's a usable version of Rodrigo Queiro's idea. It doesn't change the status bar, and it restores the statusmsg variable.

function WordCount()
  let s:old_status = v:statusmsg
  exe "silent normal g\"
  let s:word_count = str2nr(split(v:statusmsg)[11])
  let v:statusmsg = s:old_status
  return s:word_count
endfunction

This seems to be fast enough to include directly in the status line, e.g.:

:set statusline=wc:%{WordCount()}