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

My suggestion:

function! UpdateWordCount()
  let b:word_count = eval(join(map(getline("1", "$"), "len(split(v:val, '\\s\\+'))"), "+"))
endfunction

augroup UpdateWordCount
  au!
  autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter,CursorHold,CursorHoldI,InsertEnter,InsertLeave * call UpdateWordCount()
augroup END

let &statusline='wc:%{get(b:, "word_count", 0)}'

I'm not sure how this compares in speed to some of the other solutions, but it's certainly a lot simpler than most.