word counter with regex in powershell

Question

var words = "word worddd woord wooord 45555";

var wordCount = words.match(/([a-zA-Z]\w+)/g).length;

if(wordCount == 4 || wordCount == 6 ){
  WScript.Echo(wordCount);//Result 4
}

How to make a ps1 script that work like like jscript

Answer 1

Generally speaking: the Measure-Object cmdlet has a -Word switch:

$words = "word worddd woord wooord"

$wordCount = ($words | Measure-Object -Word).Words

if ($wordCount -in 4, 6){
   $wordCount # -> 4
}

^{Note: If you really need PS v2 support, use 4, 6 -contains $wordCount in lieu of $wordCount -in 4, 6}

---

To restrict what is considered a word to something that starts with an (ASCII-range) letter, as in your question, more work is needed:

$words = "word worddd woord wooord 45555"

# Count only words that start with an (ASCII-range) letter.
$wordCount = ((-split $words) -match '^[a-z]\w+$').Count

if ($wordCount -in 4, 6){
   $wordCount # -> 4, because '45555' wasn't counted.
}

• The unary form of -split, the string splitting operator, splits the string into an array of tokens by whitespace.

• -match, the regular-expression matching operator, matches each resulting token agains the RHS regex:

  • -match finds substrings by default, hence the need for anchors ^ and $
  • -match is case-insensitive by default (as PowerShell generally is), so [a-z] covers both lower- and uppercase letters.

• (...).Count returns the length (element count) of the resulting array of matching tokens.