Add Count The Number Of Words On A Webpage as a Unix TIL

unix/count-the-number-of-words-on-a-webpage.md

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+# Count The Number Of Words On A Webpage
+
+I was reading through a couple sections of the `postfix` documentation and I
+was astounded at how large the webpage is, and that is just for the `main.cf`
+file format.
+
+Curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to get a sense of the magnitude of
+the page. A word count seemed like a good measure.
+
+Using `pandoc` and a couple other unix utilities, I was able to quickly get
+that number.
+
+```bash
+curl -s http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html\#virtual_mailbox_maps | pandoc -f html -t plain | wc -w
+   88383
+```
+
+Generically, that is:
+
+```bash
+curl -s url | pandoc -f html -t plain | wc -w
+```
+
+Pandoc produces a plain-text version of the HTML page that was pulled in by
+`curl` and then we use `wc` to get a word (`-w`) count.