Harald Kröll wrote: > a command or script to count the characters without syntax words. For > example for people who write LaTeX documents in vim and have to > control their length...
That depends on the definition of a control word. If you only want to exclude \backslash_prefixed \words, and nothing else, then this will do: :%s/\(\\\w*\)\@<!\w//gn Explanation (right to left): //gn count ALL… \w …letters, numbers, and underscores… \@<! …NOT preceded by… \( \\ \w* \) …a backslash and possibly other letters/numbers I'm not too familiar with Latex syntax, but if you wanted to exclude \this[kind of thing] as well, it wouldn't be hard: :%s/\v(\\\w*(\[[^]]*)?)@<!\w//gn ( \\ \w* ( \[ [^]]* )? )@<! \w Tobia