PowerShell Script to Count Words in a File

Use (Get-Content filename.txt -Raw) -split '\s+' | Where-Object { $_ -ne '' } | Measure-Object | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Count to count words in a file in PowerShell.

Examples

InputHello world

Output2

InputPowerShell is great for automation

Output5

Input

Output0

How to Think About It

To count words in a file, first read the entire file content as one string, then split it by spaces or whitespace to separate words, filter out empty strings, and finally count how many pieces result from the split.

Algorithm

1

Read the whole file content as a single string.

2

Split the string into words using whitespace as separator.

3

Filter out empty strings from the split result.

4

Count the number of words obtained.

5

Return the count.

Code

powershell

$filePath = "sample.txt"
$content = Get-Content $filePath -Raw
$words = $content -split '\s+'
$count = ($words | Where-Object { $_ -ne '' }).Count
Write-Output "Word count: $count"

Output

Word count: 5

Dry Run

Let's trace counting words in a file with content 'PowerShell is great for automation'.

1

Read file content

'PowerShell is great for automation'

2

Split content by whitespace

['PowerShell', 'is', 'great', 'for', 'automation']

3

Count words

5

Step	Action	Value
1	Read content	PowerShell is great for automation
2	Split words	PowerShell, is, great, for, automation
3	Count words	5

Why This Works

Step 1: Read entire file as one string

Using Get-Content -Raw reads the whole file at once, preserving spaces and line breaks.

Step 2: Split string into words

Splitting by \s+ breaks the string at any whitespace, separating words.

Step 3: Count non-empty words

Filtering out empty strings ensures only real words are counted, then Count gives the total.

Alternative Approaches

Using Select-String and regex

powershell

$content = Get-Content sample.txt -Raw
$matches = [regex]::Matches($content, '\w+')
$count = $matches.Count
Write-Output "Word count: $count"

This uses regex to find word characters, which can be more precise but slightly slower.

Reading file line by line and counting words

powershell

$count = 0
Get-Content sample.txt | ForEach-Object { $count += ($_ -split '\s+').Where({$_ -ne ''}).Count }
Write-Output "Word count: $count"

Processes file line by line, useful for very large files to save memory.

Complexity: O(n) time, O(n) space

Time Complexity

The script reads the entire file once and splits the content once, so time grows linearly with file size.

Space Complexity

Storing the whole file content and the split words requires memory proportional to file size.

Which Approach is Fastest?

Reading the whole file at once and splitting is fastest for small to medium files; line-by-line is better for large files.

Approach	Time	Space	Best For
Whole file split	O(n)	O(n)	Small to medium files
Regex match	O(n)	O(n)	Precise word matching
Line-by-line count	O(n)	O(1)	Large files with low memory