Word count for markdown?

There is a new lua filter for that: https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#counting-words-in-a-document

Save the following code as wordcount.lua

-- counts words in a document

words = 0

wordcount = {
  Str = function(el)
    -- we don't count a word if it's entirely punctuation:
    if el.text:match("%P") then
        words = words + 1
    end
  end,

  Code = function(el)
    _,n = el.text:gsub("%S+","")
    words = words + n
  end,

  CodeBlock = function(el)
    _,n = el.text:gsub("%S+","")
    words = words + n
  end
}

function Pandoc(el)
    -- skip metadata, just count body:
    pandoc.walk_block(pandoc.Div(el.blocks), wordcount)
    print(words .. " words in body")
    os.exit(0)
end

and call pandoc like this:

pandoc --lua-filter wordcount.lua myfile.md

A somewhat manual solution:

1. use pandoc to convert the markdown file to a MS Word document (*.docx) or OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer document (*.odt)
2. open that document in LibreOffice¹
3. select everything (ctrl+a)
4. Menu Tools>Word Count

¹ OpenOffice would probably work the same, but I haven't tested that.