TeX Word Count

Small project that came from a need to count words for school projects.

A live word count for LaTeX documents, in the status bar. No LaTeX Workshop required — it activates on VS Code's built-in latex language.

$Status bar showing Total words: 260 · Section: 202 · Selected: 65$

What it shows

A single status bar item that adapts to context:

Total words: 4,210 — total words in the document
Total words: 4,210 · Section: 615 — plus the word count of the section containing the cursor
Total words: 4,210 · Section: 615 · Selected: 42 — plus the word count of the current selection

Hover the item for a breakdown (total, section title and count, selection). Click it to open the extension's settings.

Word count is regex/parser-based, not a full LaTeX engine. It:

Only counts between \begin{document} and \end{document} when that pair is present.
Strips comments (an escaped \% is kept as a literal percent sign).
Strips math ( $...$ , $...$, \[...\], equation, align, and similar environments) unless texWordCount.countMath is enabled.
Strips verbatim-like environments (verbatim, lstlisting, minted) entirely.
Drops the arguments of commands that aren't prose: \cite, \ref, \label, \usepackage, \includegraphics, \bibliography, \input, \include, \url, and similar.
Keeps the text argument of formatting commands such as \textbf{...} and \emph{...}, and of \href{url}{text} (the URL itself is dropped).
Counts heading text (\section{...}, etc.) by default; toggle with texWordCount.countHeadings.

Setting	Default	Description
`texWordCount.countMath`	`false`	Count words inside math.
`texWordCount.countCaptions`	`true`	Count words inside `\caption{...}`.
`texWordCount.countFootnotes`	`true`	Count words inside `\footnote{...}`.
`texWordCount.countHeadings`	`true`	Count words inside heading commands.
`texWordCount.sectionIncludesSubsections`	`true`	Include subsection word counts in the section count shown in the status bar.
`texWordCount.showSection`	`true`	Show the current section's word count.
`texWordCount.showSelection`	`true`	Show the current selection's word count.
`texWordCount.extraSectionCommands`	`[]`	Extra command names (no backslash) to treat as `\section`-level headings, e.g. `["mysection"]`.

Counts the current file only — \input and \include targets aren't followed.
Regex-based counting won't exactly match TeXcount on unusual or heavily customized macros.
Custom section commands aren't recognized unless added via texWordCount.extraSectionCommands.
Files over 1 MB skip live updates while typing; the count still refreshes on save or when you switch back to the editor.

npm install
npm test       # unit tests for counter.ts and sections.ts
npm run build  # bundle to dist/extension.js

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.