An R function to count words of an input text file. Built and tested on an Rmd without any R code in it.

word_count.R

word_count<-function(txt_doc){
  con<-file(txt_doc, "r", blocking=FALSE)
  x<-readLines(con)
  #Remove YAML front matter on Rmd
  if(length(grep("---",x))>0){x<-x[-seq(1,max(grep("---",x)))]}
  wrds<-0
  for(line in x){
    #Removes non character and splits
    split_line<-strsplit(gsub("[^[:alnum:] ]", "", line), " +")[[1]]
    #Removes empty string
    split_line<-split_line[split_line!=""]
    wrds<-wrds+length(split_line)
  }
  return(wrds)
}