A small command line utility taking one argument--a text file--counts the words and prints the number.

wordcount.py

#!/usr/bin/python

__doc__ = "A small command line utility taking one argument--a text file--counts the words and prints the number."

import os, sys


if len(sys.argv) == 2:
    with open(os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])) as f:
        text = f.read()
    words = text.split()
    count = len(words)
    print("File has %s words." % count)
else:
    print("One filename is required. ")