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

I really like Michael Dunn's answer above but I found that when I was editing it was causing me to be unable to access the last column. So I have a minor change for the function:

function! WordCount()
   let s:old_status = v:statusmsg
   let position = getpos(".")
   exe ":silent normal g\"
   let stat = v:statusmsg
   let s:word_count = 0
   if stat != '--No lines in buffer--'
     let s:word_count = str2nr(split(v:statusmsg)[11])
     let v:statusmsg = s:old_status
   end
   call setpos('.', position)
   return s:word_count 
endfunction

I've included it in my status line without any issues:

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