Word Count Enhanced (wordcount-selection)

Practical, lightweight word counting for any (text-based) file in VS Code. Shows both:

• Total document words
• Words in your current selection(s) (shown in parentheses)

If you only want a quick, unobtrusive word count that also helps when editing snippets or measuring selected paragraphs across any language / file type, this extension is for you.

Features

• Works for any file type (not limited to Markdown)
• Live total word count in the status bar
• Selection word count: shows (N Selected) when you select text (multi‑selection supported; counts are summed)
• Graceful fallback: shows Word Count Unavailable for extremely large or problematic files (to protect performance)
• All processing local – no telemetry, no network requests
• Simple heuristic whitespace-based counting (fast and predictable)

How Counting Works

Words are determined by collapsing consecutive whitespace and splitting on a single space. HTML-like angle bracket fragments (< ([^>]+)<) are stripped (mirroring original sample logic). Selection counts use the exact same logic on just the selected text.

Edge cases:

• Empty or whitespace-only documents report 0
• Multi-cursor selections accumulate counts
• Very large documents (> ~5MB in current version) skip counting and show a fallback message instead of freezing

Why Another Word Count Extension?

Most existing extensions either target Markdown only or don’t provide quick selection counts across any file. This fork started from Microsoft’s sample and evolved into a focused utility extension: accurate enough for drafting and editing, minimal overhead, and works everywhere.

Installation

Install from the VS Code Marketplace: Word Count Enhanced (Publisher: robna). After installation, open any file; the status bar (left side) will display the counts automatically.

No configuration is required.

Performance

Counting runs on basic events (editor activation & selection changes). For huge files a guard prevents excessive memory/CPU usage. If you routinely work with very large generated sources, you can open an issue to discuss smarter streaming strategies.

Roadmap / Ideas

• Optional configurable large-file threshold
• Exclude patterns (e.g. node_modules) – currently unnecessary because the extension activates post-startup and counts only active editor text
• More robust tokenization mode (opt-in) for languages with special delimiters

Attribution

Derived from the original MIT-licensed sample at microsoft/vscode-wordcount. Reworked for real-world usage: all-file support, selection counting, large-file safeguards, modern TypeScript toolchain, and improved documentation.

Disclaimer

Provided "AS IS" under the MIT License. Word counts are heuristic; may be inaccurate for minified, generated, binary-like, or extremely large files. No data leaves your machine. Not for safety-critical use.