字符串函数
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str_word_count

(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5)

str_word_count — 返回字符串中单词的使用情况

说明

mixed str_word_count ( string $string [, int $format = 0 [, string $charlist ]] )

统计 string 中单词的数量。如果可选的参数 format 没有被指定，那么返回值是一个代表单词数量的整型数。如果指定了 format 参数，返回值将是一个数组，数组的内容则取决于 format 参数。format 的可能值和相应的输出结果如下所列。

对于这个函数的目的来说，单词的定义是一个与区域设置相关的字符串。这个字符串可以包含字母字符，也可以包含 "'" 和 "-" 字符（但不能以这两个字符开始）。

参数

string

字符串。

format

指定函数的返回值。当前支持的值如下：

  • 0 - 返回单词数量
  • 1 - 返回一个包含 string 中全部单词的数组
  • 2 - 返回关联数组。数组的键是单词在 string 中出现的数值位置，数组的值是这个单词

charlist

附加的字符串列表，其中的字符将被视为单词的一部分。

返回值

返回一个数组或整型数，这取决于 format 参数的选择。

更新日志

版本 说明
5.1.0 新增 charlist 参数。

范例

Example #1 str_word_count() 范例

<?php

$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're
       looking          good today!";

print_r(str_word_count($str, 1));
print_r(str_word_count($str, 2));
print_r(str_word_count($str, 1, 'àá??3'));

echo str_word_count($str);

?>

以上例程会输出：

Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] => fri
    [2] => nd
    [3] => you're
    [4] => looking
    [5] => good
    [6] => today
)

Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [6] => fri
    [10] => nd
    [14] => you're
    [29] => looking
    [46] => good
    [51] => today
)

Array
(
    [0] => Hello
    [1] => fri3nd
    [2] => you're
    [3] => looking
    [4] => good
    [5] => today
)

7

参见

字符串函数
在线手册：中文 英文
PHP手册
PHP手册 - N: 返回字符串中单词的使用情况

用户评论:

cito at wikatu dot com (04-Feb-2012 05:29)

<?php

/***
 * This simple utf-8 word count function (it only counts)
 * is a bit faster then the one with preg_match_all
 * about 10x slower then the built-in str_word_count
 *
 * If you need the hyphen or other code points as word-characters
 * just put them into the [brackets] like [^\p{L}\p{N}\'\-]
 * If the pattern contains utf-8, utf8_encode() the pattern,
 * as it is expected to be valid utf-8 (using the u modifier).
 **/

// Jonny 5's simple word splitter
function str_word_count_utf8($str) {
  return count(preg_split('~[^\p{L}\p{N}\']+~u',$str));
}
?>

Samer Ata (05-Jan-2012 05:21)

This is my own version of to get SEO meta description from wordpress post content. it is also generic usage function to get the first n words from a string.

<?php
function my_meta_description($text,$n=10)
{
$text=strip_tags($text);  // not neccssary for none HTML
// $text=strip_shortcodes($text); // uncomment only inside wordpress system
$text = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$text));
$word_array = explode(" ", $text);
if (count($word_array) <= $n)
return implode(" ",$word_array);
else
{
$text='';
foreach ($word_array as $length=>$word)
{
    $text.=$word ;
    if($length==$n) break;
    else $text.=" ";
}
}
return $text;
?>

Stano110 at azet dot sk (10-Jul-2011 02:36)

This function count words, is quick and works well with utf-8: (this is corrected version from my previous post)

<?php
function count_words($string)
{
    $string = htmlspecialchars_decode(strip_tags($string));
    if (strlen($string)==0)
        return 0;
    $t = array(' '=>1, '_'=>1, "\x20"=>1, "\xA0"=>1, "\x0A"=>1, "\x0D"=>1, "\x09"=>1, "\x0B"=>1, "\x2E"=>1, "\t"=>1, '='=>1, '+'=>1, '-'=>1, '*'=>1, '/'=>1, '\\'=>1, ','=>1, '.'=>1, ';'=>1, ':'=>1, '"'=>1, '\''=>1, '['=>1, ']'=>1, '{'=>1, '}'=>1, '('=>1, ')'=>1, '<'=>1, '>'=>1, '&'=>1, '%'=>1, '$'=>1, '@'=>1, '#'=>1, '^'=>1, '!'=>1, '?'=>1); // separators
    $count= isset($t[$string[0]])? 0:1;
    if (strlen($string)==1)
        return $count;
    for ($i=1;$i<strlen($string);$i++)
        if (isset($t[$string[$i-1]]) && !isset($t[$string[$i]])) // if new word starts
            $count++;
    return $count;
}
?>

Stano110 at azet dot sk (10-Jul-2011 01:05)

This function count words, is quick and works well with utf-8:

    function count_words($string)
    {
        //$string = htmlspecialchars_decode(strip_tags($string)); // optional
        $t = array(' '=>1, '_'=>1, "\x20", "\xA0", "\x0A", "\x0D", "\x09", "\x0B", '='=>1, '+'=>1, '-'=>1, '*'=>1, '/'=>1, '\\'=>1, ','=>1, '.'=>1, ';'=>1, ':'=>1, '"'=>1, '\''=>1, '['=>1, ']'=>1, '{'=>1, '}'=>1, '('=>1, ')'=>1, '<'=>1, '>'=>1, '&'=>1, '%'=>1, '$'=>1, '@'=>1, '#'=>1, '^'=>1, '!'=>1, '?'=>1); // separators
        $count= isset($t[$string[0]])? 0:1;
        for ($i=1;$i<strlen($string);$i++)
            if (isset($t[$string[$i-1]]) && !isset($t[$string[$i]])) // if new word starts
                $count++;
        return $count;
    }

Zulfugar Ismayilzadeh admin at mid dot az (14-Apr-2011 12:52)

This function count words. But this function works with UTF-8 too.

<?php

/**
 * @author Zulfugar Ismayilzadeh
 * @copyright 2011
 */

function count_words($string){
  
   $string = trim(preg_replace("/\s+/"," ",$string));
  
   $word_array = explode(" ", $string);
  
   $num = count($word_array);
  
   return $num;
  
}

$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're               looking good today!";

echo count_words($str);

?>

matthewkastor at live dot com (06-Apr-2011 03:08)

This needs improvement, but works well as is.

<?php
/**
 * Generates an alphabetical index of unique words, and a count of their occurrences, in a file.
 *
 * This works on html pages or plain text files.
 * This function uses file_get_contents, so it
 * is possible to use a url instead of a local filename.
 *
 * Change the search pattern at
 * <code> $junk = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z]/', $word); </code>
 * if you want to keep words with numbers or other characters. The pattern
 * I've set searches for anything that is not an upper or lowercase letter,
 * you may want something else.
 *
 * The array returned will look something like this:
 * <code>
 * Array
 * (
 *     [0] => Array
 *        (
 *            [word] => a
 *            [count] => 21
 *        )
 *
 *     [1] => Array
 *        (
 *            [word] => ability
 *            [count] => 1
 *        )
 * )
 * </code>
 *
 * @param string $file The file ( or url ) you want to create an index from.
 * @return array
 */
function index_page($file) {
    $index = array();
    $find = array(
        '/\r/',
        '/\n/',
        '/\s\s+/'
    );
    $replace = array(
        ' ',
        ' ',
        ' '
    );
    $work = file_get_contents($file);
    $work = preg_replace('/[>][<]/', '> <', $work);
    $work = strip_tags($work);
    $work = strtolower($work);
    $work = preg_replace($find, $replace, $work);
    $work = trim($work);
    $work = explode(' ', $work);
    natcasesort($work);
    $i = 0;
    foreach($work as $word) {
        $word = trim($word);
        $junk = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z]/', $word);
        if($junk == 1) {
            $word = '';
        }
        if( (!empty($word)) && ($word != '') ) {
            if(!isset($index[$i]['word'])) { // if not set this is a new index
                $index[$i]['word'] = $word;
                $index[$i]['count'] = 1;
            } elseif( $index[$i]['word'] == $word ) {  // count repeats
                $index[$i]['count'] += 1;
            } else { // else this is a different word, increment $i and create an entry
                $i++;
                $index[$i]['word'] = $word;
                $index[$i]['count'] = 1;
            }
        }
    }
    unset($work);
    return($index);
}
?>

example usage:

<?php
$file = 'http://www.php.net/';
// or use a local file, see file_get_contents() for valid filenames and restrictions.

$index = index_page($file);
echo '<pre>'.print_r($index,true).'</pre>';
?>

dmVuY2lAc3RyYWhvdG5pLmNvbQ== (base64) (18-Oct-2010 12:39)

to count words after converting a msword document to plain text with antiword, you can use this function:

<?php
function count_words($text) {
    $text = str_replace(str_split('|'), '', $text); // remove these chars (you can specify more)
    $text = trim(preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $text)); // remove extra spaces
    $text = preg_replace('/-{2,}/', '', $text); // remove 2 or more dashes in a row
    $len = strlen($text);
   
    if (0 === $len) {
        return 0;
    }
   
    $words = 1;
   
    while ($len--) {
        if (' ' === $text[$len]) {
            ++$words;
        }
    }
   
    return $words;
}
?>

it strips the pipe "|" chars, which antiword uses to format tables in its plain text output, removes more than one dashes in a row (also used in tables), then counts the words.

counting words using explode() and then count() is not a good idea for huge texts, because it uses much memory to store the text once more as an array. this is why i'm using while() { .. } to walk the string

lballard dot cat at gmail dot com (27-Sep-2010 04:17)

word limiter:

$str = "my hella long string" ;
$length = 3;
$shortened =
implode(' ',array_slice(str_word_count($str,1),0,$length));

brettz9 - see yahoo (13-Feb-2010 07:33)

Words also cannot end in a hyphen unless allowed by the charlist...

charliefrancis at gmail dot com (29-Jul-2009 12:56)

Hi this is the first time I have posted on the php manual, I hope some of you will like this little function I wrote.

It returns a string with a certain character limit, but still retaining whole words.
It breaks out of the foreach loop once it has found a string short enough to display, and the character list can be edited.

<?php
function word_limiter( $text, $limit = 30, $chars = '0123456789' ) {
    if( strlen( $text ) > $limit ) {
        $words = str_word_count( $text, 2, $chars );
        $words = array_reverse( $words, TRUE );
        foreach( $words as $length => $word ) {
            if( $length + strlen( $word ) >= $limit ) {
                array_shift( $words );
            } else {
                break;
            }
        }
        $words = array_reverse( $words );
        $text = implode( " ", $words ) . '&hellip;';
    }
    return $text;
}

$str = "Hello this is a list of words that is too long";
echo '1: ' . word_limiter( $str );
$str = "Hello this is a list of words";
echo '2: ' . word_limiter( $str );
?>

1: Hello this is a list of words&hellip;
2: Hello this is a list of words

pdziok at gmail dot com (05-Jul-2009 08:08)

I like your function eanimator but it got a little mistake - before the dots it putted another space.
This is a version with "bug" repaired:

<?php
function WordLimiter($text,$limit=20){
    $explode = explode(' ',$text);
    $string  = '';

    $dots = '...';
    if(count($explode) <= $limit){
        $dots = '';
    }
    for($i=0;$i<$limit;$i++){
        $string .= $explode[$i]." ";
    }
    if ($dots) {
        $string = substr($string, 0, strlen($string));
    }

    return $string.$dots;
}
?>

jazz090 (13-Apr-2009 06:39)

Personally, I dont like using this function becuase the characters it omits are sometime nessesery for instance MS Word counts ">" or "<" alone as single word where this function doesnt. I like using this however, it counts EVERYTHING:

<?php
function num_words($string){
    preg_match_all("/\S+/", $string, $matches);
    return count($matches[0]);
}
?>

splogamurugan at gmail dot com (05-Feb-2009 10:32)

We can also specify a range of values for charlist.

<?php
$str = "Hello fri3nd, you're
       looking          good today!
       look1234ing";
print_r(str_word_count($str, 1, '0..3'));
?>

will give the result as

Array ( [0] => Hello [1] => fri3nd [2] => you're [3] => looking [4] => good [5] => today [6] => look123 [7] => ing )

eanimator at yahoo dot com (11-Jan-2009 08:37)

My quick and rough wordLimiter function.

<?php
function WordLimiter($text,$limit=20){
    $explode = explode(' ',$text);
    $string  = '';
       
    $dots = '...';
    if(count($explode) <= $limit){
        $dots = '';
    }
    for($i=0;$i<$limit;$i++){
        $string .= $explode[$i]." ";
    }
       
    return $string.$dots;
}
?>

manrash at gmail dot com (22-Dec-2008 11:06)

For spanish speakers a valid character map may be:

<?php
$characterMap = 'áéíóúü?';

$count = str_word_count($text, 0, $characterMap);
?>

om+www dot php dot net at miakinen dot net (07-Sep-2008 09:23)

The previous function str_word_count_utf8 implemented only the first parameter, $string. Here is an implementation which also supports the second parameter, $format. The $charlist is not supported, though it could be possible to give the possibility to change the MASK.

<?php
    define("WORD_COUNT_MASK", "/\p{L}[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}'\x{2019}]*/u");

    function str_word_count_utf8($string, $format = 0)
    {
        switch ($format) {
        case 1:
            preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches);
            return $matches[0];
        case 2:
            preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
            $result = array();
            foreach ($matches[0] as $match) {
                $result[$match[1]] = $match[0];
            }
            return $result;
        }
        return preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $string, $matches);
    }
?>

Note that in the case $format=2 the numeric positions are expressed in octets, not in characters.

om+www dot php dot net at miakinen dot net (06-Sep-2008 10:29)

Here is a code for a function str_word_count() compatible with UTF-8. I'm sorry that the comments are in French because I am not very good in English: anyway, these comments only try to explain things that are in PCRE or Unicode documentations.

<?php
    /*
     * Explications du masque pour preg_match_all.
     *
     * La fonction str_word_count standard considère qu'un mot est
     * une séquence de caractères qui contient tous les caractères
     * alphabétiques, et qui peut contenir, mais pas commencer
     * par "'" et "-".
     *
     * Avec Unicode et UTF-8, une lettre peut être un caractères
     * ASCII non accentué tel que "e" ou "E", mais aussi un "é" ou
     * un "?", lequel peut se représenter sous la forme de deux
     * caractères : d'abord le "E" non accentué, puis l'accent tout
     * seul. Une lettre "E" ou "?" fait partie de la classe ? L ?,
     * un accent de la classe ? Mn ?.
     *
     * Par ailleurs, "-" n'est plus le seul trait d'union possible.
     * Plut?t que de les lister individuellement, j'ai choisi de
     * tester les caractères de la classe ? Pd ?. Un inconvénient
     * est que cela inclut aussi le tiret cadratin et d'autres,
     * mais cet inconvénient existait déjà avec str_word_count et
     * le tiret ascii, et en outre il ne concerne pas le fran?ais
     * (contrairement à l'anglais, il y a toujours des espaces
     * autour de ces tirets).
     *
     * Enfin, "'" n'est pas non plus la seule apostrophe possible.
     * Mais contrairement aux tirets je teste juste l'apostrophe
     * typographique U+2019 à part au lieu de tester la classe ? Pf ?
     * car cette dernière contient trop de signes de ponctuation
     * à exclure de la définition d'un mot.
     *
     * Un mot commence donc par une lettre \p{L}, éventuellement
     * accentuée (suivie par un nombre quelconque de \p{Mn}), et
     * ensuite on peut rencontrer un nombre quelconques d'autres
     * lettres (\p{L} et \p{Mn}), de tirets (\p{Pd}) ou d'apostrophes
     * (' et \x{2019}). Tout ceci, bien s?r, dans un masque compatible
     * avec UTF-8 (/u à la fin).
     *
     * Pour les références, voir :
     * http://fr2.php.net/manual/fr/regexp.reference.php #regexp.reference.unicode
     * http://fr2.php.net/manual/fr/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php
     */
    define("WORD_COUNT_MASK", "/\p{L}[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}'\x{2019}]*/u");

    function str_word_count_utf8($str)
    {
        return preg_match_all(WORD_COUNT_MASK, $str, $matches);
    }

luce (06-Sep-2008 10:52)

Fix Cathy function bug.

Original Cathy function :
[code]
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          $pos = array_keys($words);
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>
[/code]

This function return undefined index if $limit < $text.

For fix it :
[code]
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limitstr, $limitwrd) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limitstr) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          if ($words > $limitwrd) {
              $pos = array_keys($words);
              $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limitwrd]) . '...';
          }
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>
[/code]

aspu.ru (17-Jun-2008 12:21)

str_word_count: mixed (string string, [int format], [string charlist])

It can help you to solve problem with digest and some locales. Best regards.

robocop at robotix dot fr (30-Mar-2008 02:21)

function count_words($texte)
{
$texte=trim($texte);
$motsinutiles = array(' * ', ' - ', ' : ', '\n');
$texte = str_replace($motsinutiles, '', $texte);
$texte = preg_replace("/\s\s+/", " ", $texte);
$decoupeapostrophes = count(explode('\'', $texte)); //On découpe la chaine en apostrophes
   if($decoupeapostrophes==0) $nombreapostrophes = 0;
   if ($decoupeapostrophes%2==0) {$nombreapostrophes = $decoupeapostrophes/2;}
   else  $nombreapostrophes = ($decoupeapostrophes/2)-0.5;
$nombreespace = count(explode(' ', $texte));

return $nombreespace+$nombreapostrophes;   
}

security_man (24-Dec-2007 09:13)

there was a glitch in the code cathy put a post or two ago... should be:

    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
    $text = strip_tags($text);
      $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
      $pos = array_keys($words);
      if (count($words) > $limit) {
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . ' ...';
      }
    return $text;
    }

I also added the strip tags in case there is html in there to gum up the works

Adeel Khan (09-Dec-2007 04:01)

<?php

/**
 * Returns the number of words in a string.
 * As far as I have tested, it is very accurate.
 * The string can have HTML in it,
 * but you should do something like this first:
 *
 *    $search = array(
 *      '@<script[^>]*?>.*?</script>@si',
 *      '@<style[^>]*?>.*?</style>@siU',
 *      '@<![\s\S]*?--[ \t\n\r]*>@'
 *    );
 *    $html = preg_replace($search, '', $html);
 *
 */

function word_count($html) {

  # strip all html tags
  $wc = strip_tags($html);

  # remove 'words' that don't consist of alphanumerical characters or punctuation
  $pattern = "#[^(\w|\d|\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-|:|\&|@)]+#";
  $wc = trim(preg_replace($pattern, " ", $wc));

  # remove one-letter 'words' that consist only of punctuation
  $wc = trim(preg_replace("#\s*[(\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-|:|\&|@)]\s*#", " ", $wc));

  # remove superfluous whitespace
  $wc = preg_replace("/\s\s+/", " ", $wc);

  # split string into an array of words
  $wc = explode(" ", $wc);

  # remove empty elements
  $wc = array_filter($wc);

  # return the number of words
  return count($wc);

}

?>

Cathy (19-Jul-2007 09:16)

A cute little function for truncating text to a given word limit:
<?php
    function limit_text($text, $limit) {
      if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          $pos = array_keys($words);
          $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
      }
      return $text;
    }
?>

geertdd at gmail dot com (13-Jun-2007 05:04)

This is an update to my previously posted word_limiter() function. The regex is even more optimized now. Just replace the preg_match line. Change to:

<?php
preg_match('/^\s*(?:\S+\s*){1,'. (int) $limit .'}/', $str, $matches);

geertdd at gmail dot com (28-May-2007 12:52)

Here's a very fast word limiter function that preserves the original whitespace.

<?php

function word_limiter($str, $limit = 100, $end_char = '&#8230;') {
   
    if (trim($str) == '')
        return $str;
   
    preg_match('/\s*(?:\S*\s*){'. (int) $limit .'}/', $str, $matches);

    if (strlen($matches[0]) == strlen($str))
        $end_char = '';

    return rtrim($matches[0]) . $end_char;
}

?>

For the thought process behind this function, please read: http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/51788/

Geert De Deckere

joshua dot blake at gmail dot com (03-Mar-2007 01:02)

I needed a function which would extract the first hundred words out of a given input while retaining all markup such as line breaks, double spaces and the like. Most of the regexp based functions posted above were accurate in that they counted out a hundred words, but recombined the paragraph by imploding an array down to a string. This did away with any such hopes of line breaks, and thus I devised a crude but very accurate function which does all that I ask it to:

function Truncate($input, $numWords)
{
  if(str_word_count($input,0)>$numWords)
  {
    $WordKey = str_word_count($input,1);
    $PosKey = str_word_count($input,2);
    reset($PosKey);
    foreach($WordKey as $key => &$value)
    {
        $value=key($PosKey);
        next($PosKey);
    }
    return substr($input,0,$WordKey[$numWords]);
  }
  else {return $input;}
}

The idea behind it? Go through the keys of the arrays returned by str_word_count and associate the number of each word with its character position in the phrase. Then use substr to return everything up until the nth character. I have tested this function on rather large entries and it seems to be efficient enough that it does not bog down at all.

Cheers!

Josh

josh at joshblake.net (01-Mar-2007 11:57)

I was interested in a function which returned the first few words out of a larger string.

In reality, I wanted a preview of the first hundred words of a blog entry which was well over that.

I found all of the other functions which explode and implode strings to arrays lost key markups such as line breaks etc.

So, this is what I came up with:

function WordTruncate($input, $numWords) {
if(str_word_count($input,0)>$numWords)
{
    $WordKey = str_word_count($input,1);
    $WordIndex = array_flip(str_word_count($input,2));
    return substr($input,0,$WordIndex[$WordKey[$numWords]]);
}
else {return $input;}
}

While I haven't counted per se, it's accurate enough for my needs. It will also return the entire string if it's less than the specified number of words.

The idea behind it? Use str_word_count to identify the nth word, then use str_word_count to identify the position of that word within the string, then use substr to extract up to that position.

Josh.

(30-Jan-2007 04:15)

Here is a php work counting function together with a javascript version which will print the same result.

<?php
      //Php word counting function
      function word_count($theString)
      {
        $char_count = strlen($theString);
        $fullStr = $theString." ";
        $initial_whitespace_rExp = "^[[:alnum:]]$";
       
        $left_trimmedStr = ereg_replace($initial_whitespace_rExp,"",$fullStr);
        $non_alphanumerics_rExp = "^[[:alnum:]]$";
        $cleanedStr = ereg_replace($non_alphanumerics_rExp," ",$left_trimmedStr);
        $splitString = explode(" ",$cleanedStr);
       
        $word_count = count($splitString)-1;
       
        if(strlen($fullStr)<2)
        {
          $word_count=0;
        }     
        return $word_count;
      }
?>

<?php
      //Function to count words in a phrase
      function wordCount(theString)
      {
        var char_count = theString.length;
        var fullStr = theString + " ";
        var initial_whitespace_rExp = /^[^A-Za-z0-9]+/gi;
        var left_trimmedStr = fullStr.replace(initial_whitespace_rExp, "");
        var non_alphanumerics_rExp = rExp = /[^A-Za-z0-9]+/gi;
        var cleanedStr = left_trimmedStr.replace(non_alphanumerics_rExp, " ");
        var splitString = cleanedStr.split(" ");
       
        var word_count = splitString.length -1;
       
        if (fullStr.length <2)
        {
          word_count = 0;
        }     
        return word_count;
      }
?>

Aurelien Marchand (06-Oct-2006 05:06)

I found a more reliable way to print, say the first 100 words and then print elipses. My code goes this way;

$threshold_length = 80; // 80 words max
$phrase = "...."; // populate this with the text you want to display
$abody = str_word_count($phrase,2);
if(count($abody) >= $threshold_length){ // gotta cut
  $tbody = array_keys($abody);
  echo "<p>" . substr($phrase,0,$tbody[$threshold_length]) . "... <span class=\"more\"><a href=\"?\">read more</a></span> </p>\n";
} else { // put the whole thing
  echo "<p>" . $phrase . "</p>\n";
}

For any questions, com.iname@artaxerxes2

lwright at psu dot edu (17-Aug-2006 07:51)

If you are looking to count the frequency of words, try:

<?php

$wordfrequency = array_count_values( str_word_count( $string, 1) );

?>

rabin at rab dot in (05-Apr-2006 07:03)

There is a small bug in the "trim_text" function by "webmaster at joshstmarie dot com" below. If the string's word count is lesser than or equal to $truncation, that function will cut off the last word in the string.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: above referenced note has been removed]

This fixes the problem:

<?php
function trim_text_fixed($string, $truncation = 250) {
    $matches = preg_split("/\s+/", $string, $truncation + 1);
    $sz = count($matches);
    if ( $sz > $truncation ) {
        unset($matches[$sz-1]);
        return implode(' ',$matches);
    }
    return $string;
}
?>

webmaster at joshstmarie dot com (26-Sep-2005 12:58)

Trying to make an effiecient word splitter, and "paragraph limiter", eg, limit item text to 100, or 200 words and so-forth.

I don't know how well this compares, but it works nicely.

function trim_text($string, $word_count=100)
{
    $trimmed = "";
    $string = preg_replace("/\040+/"," ", trim($string));
    $stringc = explode(" ",$string);
    echo sizeof($stringc);
    if($word_count >= sizeof($stringc))
    {
        // nothing to do, our string is smaller than the limit.
      return $string;
    }
    elseif($word_count < sizeof($stringc))
    {
        // trim the string to the word count
        for($i=0;$i<$word_count;$i++)
        {
            $trimmed .= $stringc[$i]." ";
        }
       
        if(substr($trimmed, strlen(trim($trimmed))-1, 1) == '.')
          return trim($trimmed).'..';
        else
          return trim($trimmed).'...';
    }
}

$text = "some  test          text goes in here, I'm not sure, but ok.";
echo trim_text($text,5);

MadCoder (16-Aug-2005 05:12)

Here's a function that will trim a $string down to a certian number of words, and add a...   on the end of it.
(explansion of muz1's 1st 100 words code)

----------------------------------------------
function trim_text($text, $count){
$text = str_replace("  ", " ", $text);
$string = explode(" ", $text);
for ( $wordCounter = 0; $wordCounter <= $count;wordCounter++ ){
$trimed .= $string[$wordCounter];
if ( $wordCounter < $count ){ $trimed .= " "; }
else { $trimed .= "..."; }
}
$trimed = trim($trimed);
return $trimed;
}

Usage
------------------------------------------------
$string = "one two three four";
echo trim_text($string, 3);

returns:
one two three...

jtey at uoguelph dot ca (15-Aug-2005 12:21)

In the previous note, the example will only extract from the string, words separated by exactly one space.  To properly extract words from all strings, use regular expressions.

Example (extracting the first 4 words):
<?php
$string = "One    two three       four  five six";
echo implode(" ", array_slice(preg_split("/\s+/", $string), 0, 4));
?>

The above $string would not have otherwise worked when using the explode() method below.

jtey at uoguelph dot ca (14-Aug-2005 03:59)

In reply to muz1's post below:

You can also take advantage of using other built in PHP functions to get to your final result.  Consider the following:
<?php
$string = "One two three four five six seven eight nine ten.";
// the first n words to extract
$n = 3;
// extract the words
$words = explode(" ", $string);
// chop the words array down to the first n elements
$firstN = array_slice($words, 0, $n);
// glue the 3 elements back into a spaced sentence
$firstNAsAString = implode(" ", $firstN);
// display it
echo $firstNAsAString;
?>

Or to do it all in one line:
<?php
echo implode(" ", array_slice(explode(" ", $string), 0, $n));
?>

muz1 at muzcore dot com (12-Aug-2005 08:56)

This function is awesome however I needed to display the first 100 words of a string. I am submitting this as a possible solution but also to get feedback as to whether it is the most efficient way of doing it.

<?
                                    $currString = explode(" ", $string);
for ($wordCounter=0; $wordCounter<100; $wordCounter++) { echo $currString[$wordCounter]." "; }
?>

(16-Jan-2005 02:38)

This function seems to view numbers as whitespace. I.e. a word consisting of numbers only won't be counted.

aix at lux dot ee (14-Nov-2004 10:53)

One function.
<?php
if (!function_exists('word_count')) {
function word_count($str,$n = "0"){
    $m=strlen($str)/2;
    $a=1;
    while ($a<$m) {
        $str=str_replace("  "," ",$str);
        $a++;
        }
    $b = explode(" ", $str);
    $i = 0;
    foreach ($b as $v) {
        $i++;
        }
    if ($n==1) return $b;
    else  return $i;

    }
}
$str="Tere Tartu linn";
$c  = word_count($str,1); // it return an array
$d  = word_count($str); // it return int - how many words was in text
print_r($c);
echo $d;
?>

aidan at php dot net (26-Jun-2004 11:02)

This functionality is now implemented in the PEAR package PHP_Compat.

More information about using this function without upgrading your version of PHP can be found on the below link:

http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_Compat

Kirils Solovjovs (22-Feb-2004 05:06)

Nothing of this worked for me. I think countwords() is very encoding dependent. This is the code for win1257. For other layots you just need to redefine the ranges of letters...

<?php
function countwords($text){
        $ls=0;//was it a whitespace?
        $cc33=0;//counter
        for($i=0;$i<strlen($text);$i++){
                $spstat=false; //is it a number or a letter?
                $ot=ord($text[$i]);
                if( (($ot>=48) && ($ot<=57)) ||  (($ot>=97) && ($ot<=122)) || (($ot>=65) && ($ot<=90)) || ($ot==170) ||
                (($ot>=192) && ($ot<=214)) || (($ot>=216) && ($ot<=246)) || (($ot>=248) && ($ot<=254))  )$spstat=true;
                if(($ls==0)&&($spstat)){
                        $ls=1;
                        $cc33++;
                }
                if(!$spstat)$ls=0;
        }
        return $cc33;
}

?>

Artimis (15-Oct-2003 10:32)

Never use this function to count/separate alphanumeric words, it will just split them up words to words, numbers to numbers.  You could refer to another function "preg_split" when splitting alphanumeric words.  It works with Chinese characters as well.

andrea at 3site dot it (19-May-2003 12:55)

if string doesn't contain the space " ", the explode method doesn't do anything, so i've wrote this and it seems works better ... i don't know about time and resource

<?php
function str_incounter($match,$string) {
$count_match = 0;
for($i=0;$i<strlen($string);$i++) {
if(strtolower(substr($string,$i,strlen($match)))==strtolower($match)) {
$count_match++;
}
}
return $count_match;
}
?>

example

<?php
$string = "something:something!!something";
$count_some = str_incounter("something",$string);
// will return 3
?>

megat at megat dot co dot uk (19-Apr-2003 02:29)

[Ed: You'd probably want to use regular expressions if this was the case --alindeman @ php.net]

Consider what will happen in some of the above suggestions when a person puts more than one space between words. That's why it's not sufficient just to explode the string.

olivier at ultragreen dot net (11-Apr-2003 02:10)

I will not discuss the accuracy of this function but one of the source codes above does this.

<?php
function wrdcnt($haystack) {
 $cnt = explode(" ", $haystack);
 return count($cnt) - 1;
}
?>

That could be replace by

<?php
function wrdcnt($haystack) {
 return substr_count($haystack,' ') + 1;
}
?>

I doubt this does need to be a function :)

philip at cornado dot com (07-Apr-2003 03:30)

Some ask not just split on ' ', well, it's because simply exploding on a ' ' isn't fully accurate.  Words can be separated by tabs, newlines, double spaces, etc.  This is why people tend to seperate on all whitespace with regular expressions.

rcATinterfacesDOTfr (16-Jan-2003 03:58)

Here is another way to count words :
$word_count = count(preg_split('/\W+/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));

brettNOSPAM at olwm dot NO_SPAM dot com (09-Nov-2002 08:06)

This example may not be pretty, but It proves accurate:

<?php
//count words
$words_to_count = strip_tags($body);
$pattern = "/[^(\w|\d|\'|\"|\.|\!|\?|;|,|\\|\/|\-\-|:|\&|@)]+/";
$words_to_count = preg_replace ($pattern, " ", $words_to_count);
$words_to_count = trim($words_to_count);
$total_words = count(explode(" ",$words_to_count));
?>

Hope I didn't miss any punctuation. ;-)

gorgonzola at nospam dot org (31-Oct-2002 10:48)

i tried to write a wordcounter and ended up with this:

<?php
//strip html-codes or entities
$text = strip_tags(strtr($text, array_flip(get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES))));
//count the words
$wordcount = preg_match_all("#(\w+)#", $text, $match_dummy );
?>