Count The Number of Words in a String

Here’s a quick way to count the number of words in an NSString object. The trick is to use the character set whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet which will look for spaces, tabs and newline characters.

- (NSUInteger)wordCount:(NSString *)str
{
NSUInteger words = 0;

NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString: str];

// Look for spaces, tabs and newlines
NSCharacterSet *whiteSpace = [NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet];
while ([scanner scanUpToCharactersFromSet:whiteSpace intoString:nil])
words++;

return words;
}

If you have another way to reach the same result, please post a code sample.