A couple of counting functions
I had a strict character limit of 180 chars for something I was writing. I just wrote a simple function to count characters in a region or a buffer. Another function to count the words.
(defun count-chars () "Count the number of chars in a buffer or region." (interactive) (let* ((beg (if (region-active-p) (region-beginning) (point-min))) (end (if (region-active-p) (region-end) (point-max)))) (message (number-to-string (- end beg)))))
(defun count-words () "Count the number of words in a buffer or region." (interactive) (let* ((beg (if (region-active-p) (region-beginning) (point-min))) (end (if (region-active-p) (region-end) (point-max))) (count 0)) (save-excursion (goto-char beg) (while (< (point) end) (forward-word) (setq count (1+ count)))) (message (int-to-string count))))