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

This is an improvement on Michael Dunn's version, caching the word count so even less processing is needed.

function! WC()
    if &modified || !exists("b:wordcount") 
            let l:old_status = v:statusmsg  
            execute "silent normal g\"
            let b:wordcount = str2nr(split(v:statusmsg)[11])
            let v:statusmsg = l:old_status  
            return b:wordcount
    else
            return b:wordcount
    endif
endfunction