Can one display the word count of a specific paragraph using texcount?

Question

I am currently writing a research essay and was wondering if it is possible to create a function that links a small part of the output of the texcount function to another location in the file, in my case the title page.

Here is a MWE (minimum working example) of my LaTeX file:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,footheight=20pt,footsepline,headheight=20pt,headsepline]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[nottoc,numbib]{tocbibind}
\usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage,xcolor,lastpage,verbatim,moreverb,lmodern,textcomp,tikz,float,pgf,pgfplots,hyperref}

\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}

\ihead{\color{gray} ...} 
\chead{\color{gray} ...} 
\ohead{\color{gray} ...}
\cfoot{\color{gray} \thepage\ of \pageref{LastPage} }

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}
\setlength{\headheight}{25pt}

\usepackage{setspace}
\doublespacing

\addtokomafont{headsepline}{\color{gray}} 
\addtokomafont{footsepline}{\color{gray}} 

\immediate\write18{texcount -sum main.tex > wordcount}

\newcommand\wordcount{\verbatiminput{wordcount}}

\title{...} 
\author{...}
\date{\vspace{8cm} 4000 Words in Essay || 500 Words in RPPF}

\begin{document} 

\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newpage
\tableofcontents
\newpage
\section{Introduction}

\newpage
\section{...}

\newpage
\section{Conclusion}

\newpage
\begin{thebibliography}{}
    \bibitem{xxx}
    \bibitem{yyy}
\end{thebibliography}

\newpage
\section{RPPF}

\newpage 
\wordcount
\end{document}

I apologize for the unorthodox use of the date function :D

Essentially what I want to do is replace the "500" in the date by a self-updating word count of the RPPF section.

If this is possible please let me know.

Thanks

Answer 1

I could get the total number of words (including section headers) from texcount by modifying the following idea https://app.uio.no/ifi/texcount/faq.html#latexcall (made some modifications to get the number of words, see MWE below).

To extract the words for the specific subsection, I had to rely on a bash script, see below:

#!/bin/bash
awk '/RPPF/ {print $1}' main.all | awk -F+ '{print $1}'

which I called getwords.sh. This provides the words (excluding the word 'RPPF') in the section 'RPPF'.

The file main.all is the output of texcount. You can put everything together into a single script if you want.

See MWE below.

Since the output files are just a single number, I just have included them instead of importing via verbatiminput. However, I created the commands as well if that's what you need.

Hope this helps.

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\immediate\write18{texcount -out=\jobname.all \jobname.tex; ./getwords.sh > \jobname.sec}
\immediate\write18{texcount -out=\jobname.wrd -template="{word}" \jobname.tex }
\newcommand\allcount{\verbatiminput{\jobname.all}}
\newcommand\wordcount{\verbatiminput{\jobname.wrd}}
\newcommand\seccount{\verbatiminput{\jobname.sec}}

\title{A Title} 
\author{An Author}
\date{}

\begin{document} 

\maketitle
\begin{center}
Total number of words: \input{\jobname.wrd}\\
Total number of words in section RFFP: \input{\jobname.sec}
\end{center}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newpage
\tableofcontents
\newpage

\section{Introduction}
Test

\section{Problem}
Test Test Test 

\section{Conclusion}

\begin{thebibliography}{}
    \bibitem{xxx}
    \bibitem{yyy}
\end{thebibliography}

\section{RPPF}
Test Test Test 

\newpage 
\allcount
\end{document}